


gongs that put the town into a song

by feralphoenix



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe, American Sign Language, DMAB Chara, Explicit Sexual Content, Intersex Frisk, Mute Frisk, Other, Plot With Porn, Politics, Polyamory, Poverty, Spoilers, Xeno
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-06-08 15:38:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 66,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15246462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: The two enmeshed cities at the foot of Mt Ebott, called Spiral City by those who live there, is known as the place where humans once chose mercy and established peace with monsterkind. Yet nowadays relations between the two peoples, never easy, are beginning to regain their old tension.Chara already has their plate full just trying to keep afloat financially and navigate their complex and delicate relationship with noblemonster Asriel Dreemurr, their childhood friend. They don't aspire any higher than staying unnoticed, maintaining their independence, and moving out of their shitty apartment as soon as feasible. But a series of upheavals will set them on a course where staying uninvolved in Spiral City's unrest is no longer possible.





	1. if I am out of bloom and lack your rain

**Author's Note:**

> _(my troubles are going to have troubles with me_ – you’re the ire of your father but the other half of me)  
>   
> 
> this fic includes depiction and discussion of such subjects as mental illness, homophobia, transphobia, intersexism, sexual harassment (and victim blaming), sex work (including the past sale of survival sex), Ordinary Mundane Humans-vs-Humans Racism Like You Might See In Real Life (esp. antisemitism) as well as humans having institutionalized power over monsters, ableism, and body dysphoria.
> 
> any other potentially distressing subject matter not included in this list will be added in the notes at the head of new chapters. please be responsible about your own limits while reading this story.  
>  
> 
> the title of this fic is a line from the song "abscond" by baths.

You wade knee-deep into the river shallows and close your eyes against the baking heat of the morning sun. The water is bone-cold, seeping through your pants and into your boots, swishing between your toes. The chill makes gooseflesh prickle up the small of your back and your balls curl up to your body warily, despite that you have no intention of going any deeper; the center of the Ebott River is about a story and a half higher than your head if you were to stand on its bottom and its drop-off is abrupt. The deep green smell of the murky water, still carrying undertones of sea-brine from the coast, would get into your clothes besides and make your landlady frown at you later.

Even with your hair tied up and back off the nape of your neck the heat is punishing: This is no temperature for long sleeves, but all your short-sleeved shirts that don’t drape are dirty enough that you couldn’t wear them to work, so you didn’t have much choice. You usually only get around to laundry once a week, the days when you _don’t_ have heavy physical labor to render you too exhausted to scrub your clothes on a washboard for an hour or two. Last year there was nothing about your body that you needed to hide from your fellow dock workers, and you could rotate your short-sleeved shirts and the lighter long-sleeved ones. Your budget is already too tight to shop for two or three new shirts without dipping into your precious savings.

This weekend you need to come up with some sort of plan to keep this summer from being completely fucking miserable. Until then, you get to sweat for your lack of foresight.

You take a brief pull from your water bottle and then hang it back on your belt at your right hip. You’d love to just upturn it over your head, let the water evaporating cool you, but you’re going to need it to stay hydrated through the rest of morning work and you do _not_ have time to rush further back into the Lower City to refill it during your break. Alas.

So you just stand in the water and flex your toes idly against the soaking soles of your boots, take long deep breaths of river air, let the smell of underwater plants fill your lungs and hope it’ll grant you an extra boost of vitality or energy or some such thing. You keep your eyes closed too; sun glittering off the wavelets is very pretty but too cursed bright for you to stare at for too long. You much prefer the morning mist—not only is lighthouse duty a welcome break from loading and unloading boats and wagons when you’re allowed it, but it’s soft and pretty enough to make waking up at the crack of dawn feel worth it.

_“Asher!”_ someone, you think Joel, yells. Your body jerks, and you turn automatically, blinking: After three and a half years working here you respond to that name as readily as you do to your real one. “Stop daydreaming, lad, the traffic is starting to come in!”

“I’ll be right there,” you call back, and drop your gaze to the water in your shadow: You scoop two handfuls of it and splash your face with what little doesn’t drip through your hands. You haven’t soaked your hair or your shirt, which _would_ be cooler, but it’s the best you can do under the circumstances.

The head of the wharf workers, Emil, is standing atop a wooden box in the center of where the lane between storehouses broadens out into the plaza. You have to jog to make it there before he starts to speak, wet pants slapping and boots sloshing all the way.

“We have the week’s bags of grain to send off by barges that ought to be here soon—Yusuf’s signaled to say he’s seen them coming from around the bend. Joel, you and your lads will be in charge of those today. Marah, your team is on standby until the trade ships arrive half an hour from now; I’ll go with you to confirm which storehouses to set the goods in until the city courier team arrives. Alan, you’ll replace Yusuf’s lookouts to keep a weather eye on any other boats approaching and handle discussing things with their captains to see what services they require, if any. Joel and Marah’s teams will get a ten-minute break once the barges and trade ships are clear, and will then be on standby ‘til ferries get here, when you’ll be in charge of helping passengers carry their luggage. After that you’ll be off duty for the switch to afternoon crews. All clear?”

You respond with all the other dock hands, but sweat is already starting to trickle down your sides and back very unpleasantly. Grain is _heavy,_ some of the most strenuous work there is to handle. Even before it made you ache for hours despite the muscle you’d built on this job, but now… You’d sacrifice your break time to swap duty with the trade ship teams; more boxes packed with lighter goods would mean more running back and forth but you could handle that, and you’d have more strength left for the potluck that’s travelers’ suitcases.

You don’t want to draw attention to yourself making a scene about it, though; even if you did you doubt you’d be able to swap successfully. And you don’t know Marah’s group of workers as well as Joel’s, anyway. Fuck.

Once or twice during the work you’ll be able to slip off to refill your water bottle, but you can’t slack too much or Emil will notice and want to know why. _Fuck._ All you can do is grit your teeth and think about your paycheck. Maybe if you’re _very_ lucky you’ll carry the bags of some of those rare pleasure cruisers who actually tip.

“No need to look so meek about it,” Joel says to you in an undertone, grinning broadly and without a drop of guile. “You’ve been here since you were what, fourteen or so? This is _nothing,_ then. You’ve probably got muscles on your muscles by now.”

You look at him sidelong. He’s been here even longer than you, though he was older when he signed on. “Not all of us got to grow up to be six and a half feet tall with the physique of a rain barrel.”

His grin widens. Joel isn’t a bad sort, for a human; he’s only insensitive, not malicious. There are still many times you want to grab him by the arm and lever him into the water and bask in the sound of the splash, and the grin tells you this will probably be one of them. “You are going to regret that shirt so bad very soon, little man. Why don’t you just take it _off._ It’s summer anyway, you’re going to tan sooner or later, it’s just vain to try to preserve your lily complexion for longer.”

The ‘lily’ part means he’s definitely joking, as you’re significantly darker than Joel even though he’s _already_ starting to tan, but you’re still sweating anyway, and you glare. You deserve a medal for not punching him yet, or even better, a raise. “I’m not going to flash the lot of you for _free._ If you want to ogle my tits I’m charging every single one of you a premium.”

He throws his head back and laughs. “All right, all right, pretty boy. If you want to drown in sweat, it’s your own funeral. The first barge is here. Why don’t you and Parvana and Julie go help get them moored, that ought to spare you from the first round of hauling.”

He leads the rest of the crew towards the storehouses. Parvana’s dark eyes meet yours for a moment before the two of you follow after Julie, who’s already jogging back to the docks; you and she trail the wet footsteps you left on your way to the meeting at a slower pace.

“He needs to fuck off,” she says in a low conversational tone. Her long sleeves are made of some diaphanous breezy-looking material, but there’s already sweat at the edges of her headscarf.

“He does. At least he’s not telling _you_ to wear short sleeves; then I would _actually_ have to throw him off the edge of the pier.”

This makes her laugh. “It’s not like it’s _that_ much better that he’s getting after you about it. Maybe I’ve never seen you with a prayer shawl or a yarmulke, but you take holidays off and you don’t go around half-naked in public like _some_ of the men.”

You shrug. “This isn’t the kind of job where I could wear either of those even if I wanted to. And besides, I’m Conservative anyway, not Orthodox. It’s not _required,_ strictly.”

“All I’m saying is that I’m willing to throw him off the edge of the pier for you if you’re willing to throw him for me.”

“Deal.”

Julie is already in discussion with the barge captain, letting you and Parvana get to work securing the vessel’s ropes in relative peace and quiet. One of the perks of having worked here through your late adolescence is that your fellow dockhands understand well that you abhor dealing with unfamiliar humans and will at worst turn into driftwood or panic if forced to for long enough. This lets you save the capacity to deal with strangers for your evening job.

And monster customers get left to you to handle, generally, which is fine by you: It’s a break from the heavy lifting and Emil knows you’ll treat them fairly and courteously instead of starting An Incident, which would be bad for the reputation of the whole Spiral City. Besides, monsters tip more regularly and more generously than humans do. Everyone wins.

Then it’s to the storehouse, where Joel or someone has cordoned off the grain that you’re supposed to be loading this barge with. He’s probably marking off the stores you’ll be loading the next several barges with too, but you don’t have the time to look for him: These sacks of rye are about the same size as your torso and are almost your full weight. Your wrists sting in warning when you wrap your arms around the first, and there’s a flutter of stabbing pains in the small of your back and your hips as you heft it up and get to your feet.

The pain in your wrists is an old chum at this point, and you prefer it to your joints and your fingers especially starting to feel wrong and loose and like if you bend them a little too far backwards they’ll all dislocate. Your hips and back, however, is new. Asriel swears up and down that it’s supposed to be normal, brought you a pamphlet from the doctor where he buys your pills and everything; you were happy to see the back of your original set of growing pains and cannot wait for these new ones to be over with. It’s nice to know that this isn’t the sign of some serious injury but significantly less so to know that all you can do is endure until it’s over.

You can barely get your chin over the top of the sack to make sure you know where the fuck you’re going, and it’s a crushing weight against your breasts. It’s probably stupid to worry about them getting pressed flat again, you are _fairly_ sure that’s not how these things work, but it’s taken months for them to get to a noticeable size when your shirt’s off and you don’t want that work getting undone. They’re woefully tender from the new growth too, and your nerves let you know loudly that they don’t like the pressure.

You could jog back to the boat to be relieved of the burden more quickly, but doing so would chip at your stamina and would also court slipping on the wet wood and hurting yourself. Doctor visits are out of your budget, and you need to last for another two hours, so you just power walk like a sensible person.

The rest of Joel’s crew is packing sacks of grain in the same place as you, so you don’t even have to ask where you’re going—you just have to follow the rest of them. There’s a room on the deck of the barge with double doors kept open with wooden boxes; you pick your steps on the rolling deck and follow Julie’s bouncing ponytail into the storeroom, set your sack of rye down next to hers. Then you retreat from the room onto the open deck and back onto the docks, shake your arms out and take the opportunity to breathe deep while you can because now you get to do it all over again.

It is mind-numbingly monotonous labor, for all that transporting goods is such an important task for the continued survival of every town, village, and city up and down the length of the Ebott River. It’s good when you need to not think, and to some degree when you _do_ need to think, though daydreaming’s chancy on the docks themselves where footing is less sure; other than that it’s physically grueling and about as entertaining as watching paint dry.

There’s something satisfying about watching each section of storehouse get depleted or filled in turn, though. Your coworkers are livable, you get paid in coin every day instead of having a weekly or monthly salary that’s doled out in checks, and that salary is very good, about on par with the more lucrative of your short-term jobs. With it, you’re able to afford your rent and still buy yourself a meal and a bit per day, then slot any remaining gold towards moving out of your shitty cramped apartment. You’ll put up with a little boredom for the sake of the stability you get in return.

The sun is higher in the sky when your arms ache too badly for you to pick up a new bag, but not as high as you would like—you’re only on the second barge of the day. You stop to lean against the storeroom wall and drain your water bottle, then slip away across the plaza and towards the nearest great fountain.

There are people milling about, going back and forth to work, hawking their wares or stopping for lunch; not many people are around the fountain, which lets you sit on its edge and refill your bottle at a leisurely pace. You drink from it, then refill it, and lean over to soak your hands and wrists and forearms in it: There’s no need to worry about dirtying the water and getting shouted at, because like the other fountains it’s bespelled monthly by great monster mages to stay safely potable. Dirt and leaves and any manner of mortal filth is magically prevented from mixing with it, and is filtered away. It’s even kept cool in summer and warm in winter, so that you could theoretically take a dip in the stuff. The same bespelled water is routed to the public showers, though, so splashing around in the fountains is frowned upon for anyone old enough to know better.

Just dipping your arms in is a relief to your aching muscles, though, and that momentary relief is going to have to be enough for the time being. You get back to your feet with a grunt and plod back to your workplace, falling back in line to pick up another massive sack of grain to load barges with.

“Where did _you_ get off to, Asher?” Joel, who’s also in the storehouse picking up rye, wants to know.

You grunt. “Ran out of water. Got a refill.”

He shrugs and seems content to leave it at that. “If you need to take a piss later, try and be quick about it. We need to get through with these before the passenger boats show up.”

You grunt again to let him know you heard him and get back to packing.

By the time the barges have all gone, you have had to take four more such brief two-minute breaks, as well as one half-minute one to relieve yourself. When Emil calls for Joel’s crew to enter break before the ferries arrive, you sit heavily on the side of the dock with your feet in the water and concentrate on breathing. You feel as though someone has traded the muscles in your arms for electric cords— _shitty_ ones, too, chewed and mostly-frayed, the kind that they have at your apartment.

Someone sits heavily next to you, much too close for your taste; you’re too tired to scoot sideways so all you can do is bristle. It’s Joel. You think about calling for Parvana to push him into the water, but that would mean revealing you’re not comfortable, and you could count the number of your coworkers you’re okay with knowing that on one hand.

“Hell, Asher, what’s gotten into you?” he says, squinting into your face. “You’ve been running off like you’re a hare with babies to check on all morning, and you look like you got run over by a whole caravan. This _can’t_ just be your shirt. You’re not sick or anything, are you?”

Giving him the finger would require raising your arms, which you would rather not do right about now. “Certainly not, just tired. I might have pulled something, a little.”

It’s a bad lie but Joel just pulls a face in sympathy. “You want I should give you a shoulder massage? You might hate touchy-feely stuff but it could help you get through the rest of work.”

You _love_ ‘touchy-feely stuff’ but only from one person. You are not about to explain this to Joel. Your hackles are already rising a little at the thought of getting manhandled, but it’s a practical offer, so you sigh. “Make it quick.”

“Sure thing.” He scoots in even _closer,_ resting his big meaty hands on your shoulders; you bow your head so that you won’t have to betray your dislike. He grips and squeezes like somebody kneading bread: This feels much like being stabbed with fistfuls of small spikes at first, making your expression twist into a snarl, and then starts to soothe. As an afterthought you lift one hand into your lap and pinch the fabric of your shirt by your stomach, making it look like you’re just lifting it off your skin against the heat instead of trying to disguise the outline of your chest just in case it might be visible from where Joel’s sitting. “This any better, kiddo?”

“A bit.” You need to start doing pushups at night or something, because clearly your hope that the amount of physical labor you do regularly would compensate for the way your body is changing was foolish and misplaced. Joel finally stops groping your shoulders, and you sigh and roll them. Maybe you’ll ask Asriel for a proper massage later. “Should be good enough for the next hour, god willing.”

“Well, good luck,” Joel says, and leaves. You stay where you are until Emil calls on you to help with mooring the ferry.

There is an entire queue of passengers set up for today’s ride, nearly all of them human. Many of them have thankfully arrived only with enough bags to carry by themselves, but all the cursed rest have luggage piled up in carts. The well-dressed among them only volunteer to carry the lightest of their bags; hauling the rest of their loads is what you and everyone else are for.

Joel’s massage is not going to last you for the hour and you wish your distaste for homo sapiens as a whole had not won out over your common sense. Your wrists feel loose and horrible again, and your _biceps_ have gone from tearing fire to prickly numbness. Sweat soaks your collar horribly and even pausing to drink water you feel vaguely dizzy. You want to fuck off and go get horizontal for the rest of the day. You want to rest your head in Asriel’s lap and let him feed you whatever scraps he’s brought like you really are his pet, abandon your dignity completely.

You also want your goddamn _salary,_ and it’s only got to be—what, thirty minutes left? Twenty? You scowl at an especially large trunk some human traveler is bringing and bend down to carry it balanced on your back instead of trying to heft it up in your arms. At least walking with your head down means that you can see where you’re putting your feet. You step across cobblestones, over gravelly sand, and onto wet wood.

The muscles in your right arm seize and twitch.

You try to shift to bear up the trunk, but your fingers have gone slack—unable to bear up the weight any longer, you go down diagonally underneath its bulk. Your knees slam the wooden boards of the dock, a jolt that you feel in your ribs; your burden yaws sideways and something painful catches at your upper arm. Your forehead meets the dock in a sharp blow—you manage to miss mashing your nose, but barely.

When the white static leaves your ears you’re engulfed in a clamor of voices calling you by the name they know. You freeze where you are as you try to squint your eyes open; it’s more than your life’s worth if you dump some rich customer’s luggage into the river by sitting up too quickly.

The trunk’s weight lifts off your side and back without your say-so. “What are you _doing,_ boy?” says Emil’s stern voice. You hurt too much to feel sick, but there’s still a crawling sinking sensation along your back.

Careful, you raise your body to a crouch in hopes that no one will try to lift you up; when you raise your head you recoil from Joel’s large hands. He retracts them close to his body, holding them up in front of his chest and raising his eyebrows.

You’re taking up room on the docks and holding up the line, and so you’re ushered away to the side of one of the storehouses. You let them herd you there, your movements awkward lurches, your right arm still twitching from time to time. Once you have your back to a solid wall you’re told to sit, so you sit, half closing your eyes against the noon sun and taking deep steady breaths. Presently you’re able to unfasten your water bottle from your belt and drain it.

Just as you’re beginning to feel like a person again instead of a marionette with all its strings tangled, Emil detaches himself from the other workers to march towards you, his brows down and his face severe. Your pulse starts to flap in your throat like a small bird’s wings, and you claw your way to your feet. Emil is your employer, he’s all right as far as humans go, but the sight of a man powering towards you is still easier to handle if you’re on your feet and your knife is within easy reach.

“I’m sorry about that,” you tell him quickly as he stops, a little more than arm’s length away. “I’ll get back to work now.”

“Go _home,_ son,” Emil says, looking down at you, brows knitted. “If I put you back to work now there’s no guarantee your next accident won’t be worse. Go home, and rest. Take your day’s pay and get gone, Asher.”

You shut your mouth and take the money. He turns and heads back to overseeing your coworkers immediately, before you’ve even finished counting to check—he hasn’t dinged your salary even a little over today’s incident. You put your money away quickly and flee for the Lower City.

 

 

The great bronze statue of the Peacemaker and the King stands in the main plaza of the Lower City, the wide open space near where the two sets of curling tiered walls that give the Spiral City its name begin. It’s set upon a pedestal to be visible even several blocks away; the King’s head and shoulders and the very top of the Peacemaker’s head peep out over the tops of buildings before you reach the plaza; once you’re in the plaza itself you can see the human figure from about the waist up over the top of passersby’s heads.

It’s a very nice statue, in your unpracticed eye: Paintings of the ancient war always depict the Peacemaker with their hair in loose messy waves, their body cloaked and armored, but here their hair is bound into two neat long braids and they are dressed in traditional robes, their sword at their hip. As a child, climbing onto and around the statue out of boredom, you discovered that the robes are covered in intricate beading with amazing detail. The human is dwarfed by the gigantic crowned Boss Monster also in fine robes—his fur and plaited mane are as lovingly detailed as the Peacemaker’s beads—but the two of them clasp each other’s hands, smiling warmly at each other.

Asriel sits at the statue’s broad podium, waiting for you, a basket on his lap. He’s leaning idly against his ancestor’s thigh, weight rested on his hands, gazing out into the crowds and kicking his feet in boredom. He is what passes in his silly mind for _dressed-down,_ in fine dark breeches and a close-fitting powder blue shirt with demure brocade embroidery and a plethora of buttons down the front that make your fingers hurt just looking at them. But you suppose that since all Boss Monsters who live at the foot of the mountain are some form of nobility or other, and there’s no possible mistaking what sort of monster he is with the statue right behind him, he’s probably all right so long as he doesn’t wear his family’s coat of arms in the Lower City.

You duck around a gaggle of humans waiting in line at a food stall and wait for a group of Loox and Astigmatism to pass, then walk closer and call out: “Ree.”

He sits up straight; his muzzle swings towards you, already smiling. “Chara!” The next moment, though, his face crumples in concern. “Your arm…”

Your own face, which was relaxing into a smile automatically at the sound of your real name, tightens awkwardly as you try to look reassuring. “It hurts a little, but it’s not _so_ bad. Would you mind stopping the bleeding, if you can?”

“Of course.” He scoots to the side a little so that you’ll have room between the two statues’ feet; he sets the basket between you and leans around so that he can hold his left hand up to the spot on your upper arm where the trunk’s sharp corner ripped your shirt and your flesh. Your skin warms and itches under his ministrations; used to this, you shut your eyes and breathe in Asriel’s scent. He smells _clean,_ like cold purified water and fine flowers and pressed linens. Nothing down here smells that clean; the Lower City is better than the human slums but not _that_ much of an improvement. It’s a lucky thing no one else is going to bother sniffing your friend to suss out that he doesn’t belong.

Asriel hisses here, disrupting your train of thought, and you look up at him: He’s only three inches taller than your own five foot nine, but he’s built on a much larger frame, and the baby pudge that once made him a round fluffy marshmallow of a boy when the two of you were children has resettled comfortably over muscle. The back half of the mane he’s been working on is all gold, though his forehead and crown are still pure white. As a nobleman and as a Boss Monster, he’ll probably keep growing up through his mid-twenties until he’s twice your size.

“What?” you ask, frowning at him.

“Some threads got into the cut, and I’m worried that it’s getting infected. You’re bruised all over on this side, too. I can get it but it might sting a little bit.”

You want to turn him down, more than a little—not because of the prospect of pain but because a healer like him ought to be paid handsomely for service like this, and that he’s willing to give it to you freely feels like pampering. But you need this arm to work if you’re going to go back out tonight, let alone back to the wharf tomorrow, so you nod and tell him to go ahead.

There’s a bite of something searing through your wound, and you flinch despite yourself; Asriel lifts his right hand up to cup the side of your face, stroking the contour of your cheek with his thumb, and you lean into the touch, balancing out the pain with the sense of comfort, of being supported. It’s a very _big_ hand, one he hasn’t fully grown into yet; the fluff of his fur sticks to your sweaty skin but you nuzzle more firmly into the squishy pink pad on his palm.

“There, all done,” Asriel says. He takes his left hand away but lets you lean into his right for a few moments longer. “What _happened?”_

“I got worn out and made a stupid mistake is what happened,” you say. “I need to keep in mind that I’m losing muscle mass and find a way to work around it, is all.”

“You look _pounded,”_ he says unhappily. “I’m going to make a point of bringing you extra protein for lunch from now on. You need more of it.”

“Meat is _expensive_ if you want to buy reputable,” you point out, stretching out your legs. “I know what you bring me comes from animals that were raised in responsible conditions and killed humanely, and it’s better quality. Anything that’s kosher tends to cost more at market, for the extra labor and the cost of raising the livestock.”

Asriel gives you this long reproachful Look like he’s biting his tongue, but for once he doesn’t comment, and you’re glad of it. “Well, the chicken I brought’s getting cold; do you want it?”

You grin at him, crooked with frustration and hunger. “Of course I do, _idiot.”_

He opens the basket and feeds it to you, piece by piece, and you let him: It’s mostly white meat with a little dark, juicy and finely spiced with pepper and basil and a few other things you’ve never tasted except in food Asriel brings you. Your arms hurt a little less by the time he’s given you all your protein, which is good for your dignity because you don’t think he could feed you the little metal container of vegetable stew unless he propped you in his arms like an infant to tip it into your mouth, or used his own mouth to ferry it to yours. You hold the can yourself and sip from it, awkwardly tonguing the bigger vegetable chunks into your mouth when they don’t want to come out on their own.

You cleanse your palate with a sip from your water bottle, and Asriel hand-feeds you a generously sized bun baked with chunks of apple and walnuts at its center, its crust glazed all fancy with egg white to make it shine. Following this is slices of pear, cut at that miracle sliver of time where they’re wet but don’t instantly dissolve into mush, and a few chips of dried fruit glazed in dark chocolate, which you sit on your tongue and let melt.

Last of all is the little paper packet containing your pill. You tuck it under your tongue and let it stay there, leaning on Asriel’s shoulder in peaceable silence while you wait for it to be absorbed into your blood. (You also take this time to untie your hair, letting it fall almost to your shoulders. The leather thong you use to hold it in place goes into your pocket.)

“D’you want to head back to your place?” Asriel asks after maybe ten minutes have passed, looking down at you sidelong. “It ought to be a little bit cooler, and I could give you a proper massage to help your poor muscles relax if you want.”

You sit up just enough to smile at him, letting him know you’re fully aware that’s not all he’s offering. “Am I going to get you in trouble for keeping you here? God only knows what classes you’re cutting for my sake.”

Asriel wrinkles his muzzle and flaps one big hand, shaking his head. “It’s not that big a deal. Mom’s busy at work; Dad’s busy with… his stuff. Everyone else has things to do too. They’re not going to miss me.”

It appears that your best friend is either lying to spare your feelings or genuinely does not care. “As long as you’re not going to get confined to the dungeons and stop showing up all of a sudden.”

He snorts. _“Please._ I’d just break out. Nobody would stop me if I told them that my best friend is waiting on me to feed them.”

“Ah, good old monster philanthropy.” You fit your left hand into his right and give it a good squeeze. “In that case I’ll have to take you up on your offer. I ache all over, if I’m to be honest; tonight is going to be _miserable_ unless I get to lie down for a while.”

Asriel winks. “I think I can arrange that.”

 

 

He carries you up the stairs to your tiny little three-room apartment. Few enough people are home at this time of day; the likelihood of anyone showing up to give you grief is thankfully low. The wood creaks under his weight with every step; you cling with your arm wrapped over his shoulders and around his back and tuck your face into the soft side of his neck because it makes his breath hitch a little. You’re rapidly hardening, your dick bulging against the front of your pants and your nipples raising little peaks against the fabric of your shirt.

Asriel has to set you down for you to unlock your door, but he keeps his arms around your waist and his body close to yours the whole while, risking a few little licks at the side of your neck that make you shiver and moan low in your chest. It takes _much_ longer than usual to get the door open, and get through it, and then close and lock it behind you. You blame a combination of your tiredness and your warm furry distraction and the lightheadedness that comes of all your blood being too occupied elsewhere to leave your brain with much to use for thinking.

He scoops you back up off your feet and into his arms as soon as the lock is set, though; you let him, wrap your arms around him in return, relax into his fur and the clean smooth fabric of his shirt.

“Chara,” he says softly. “Can I undress you?”

You hum as you exhale. “Yes.”

So he shifts you into the crook of his arm, holding you up with the ease of Boss Monster strength, and runs his free hand up underneath your shirt. You lift your arms for him to skin it off you, and he lets it fall with a _flumph_ to the ground. Even the indoor air feels cool against your sweat-slicked back and arms—your nipples harden up further from the change in temperature.

Asriel lingers like this for a few moments, nuzzling kisses into your sternum and clavicle, ghosting the tips of his claws down your back to make you smile and shiver, bending his head to lick at your breasts. You arch your spine at this last and dig your fingers into his shoulders. “Ree, if you keep—ah—keep doing that I’m going to come in my pants.”

He resettles you against his bicep and lifts his chin to smile at you, mouth inches from yours. “I guess I’ll have to stop for a little while then,” he murmurs, “because I was hoping that you would come inside _me.”_

Asriel says this light and friendly, halfway a joke, but your cock thumps and you whine and grab his face and lean in to kiss him open-mouthed and rough. He fumbles one-handed with your belt buckle and you lick at his lips til he lets them part, suck on his teeth, close yours gently on his tongue without biting down. He nibbles your lower lip and plays with your tongue. You’re breathing in each other’s moans, you squirming against his belly automatically with how much your dick wants to be rubbed.

There’s a sudden clatter as your belt buckle finally slips apart. You push at your boots’ heels with your toes and the arches of your feet to wriggle out of them—they fall to the floor in wet _thunk_ s—and then Asriel steps over them, shimmying you out of the pants and discarding them on the floor too. The purse tucked into your pocket rattles as it hits the old wood paneling; your belt and your knife both clunk.

Asriel’s fur is _just_ scratchy enough when mussed to be a little uncomfortable against your ass and balls, but it’s only a handful of strides for him to cross the apartment into your bedroom. This is one of the nice things about your place being so small. He gentles you down onto your back along the mattress, head laid properly against the pillows. He even brushes your hair off your face before he straightens back up, a tiny little gesture that makes your whole chest sing with tender pain.

“Is this okay, or would you rather do this a different way?” he asks. The mutable tawny brown of his irises is dark now, seeming dyed by the way his pupils have gone all wide with lust; his voice is doing that thing where it goes all husky when he stage whispers.

“This is perfectly amenable,” you tell him, shifting just a little bit side to side to settle more comfortably. This mattress came with the apartment but isn’t terrible for all that. “I’m very tired, I don’t want to have to move very much if I can help it.”

Asriel nods. He’s already undoing his shirt buttons one by one, deft claws picking them out of the buttonholes to reveal more and more soft white fur. “That works fine for me, I’ll just ride you then.” He pauses to shrug out of the shirt, dropping it carelessly on the floor. His nipples are as hard as yours are, sticking out red and firm and pushing the fur around the areolae aside at weird angles; he whines and squirms a little as he starts to undo the fastenings of his breeches. “God, I’m so wet. I feel like I’ve been wet for hours now, since I started watching the clock for lunch break.”

You laugh a little, watching him. The movement of your ribs makes your breasts jiggle just a tiny bit, filling you with a warm proud sensation: You still hope they’ll grow bigger the longer you’re taking the estradiol pills, but just that they’ve gotten to a size where this is possible is so nice. “Don’t just _brag_ about it, Ree. Come sit on my dick already.”

He laughs back and pushes his breeches down his thighs and over his knees, kicking awkwardly out of them. Then he lifts his right leg up and places a careful foot next to your left hip, and leans his weight onto it, crouching over you, the motion baring his pussy. It’s as glossy with precome as he said, and with his thighs spread like this the lips are pulled softly open, like the petals of a flower that’s just about to bloom. His left foot stays on the floor—your mattress is a single, a little too small for two people to comfortably have sex on, but it’s better than fucking on blankets over hardwood so you make do.

Asriel gently wraps his left hand around the shaft of your cock. The gentle heat of his pads flashes through your whole body and makes you jump a little; Asriel chuckles and reaches in with his right hand too, spreading his vulva open the rest of the way. He lowers himself until the tip of you touches him, and his laugh blurs into a moan; you whine counterpoint. He’s slippery-hot and his pulse is beating eagerly in his lips.

Instead of just sitting down on you Asriel gently rocks, thighs straining, belly tightening. You shiver as this drags you up and down the length of his pussy; the tip of your head dips a little into his vagina on the way down and then again on the way back up, pulling at you, spreading his fluids against your skin. You grip the sheets with all your strength, panting; your nipples are so tight they’re starting to ache, your balls are pounding, precome that’s definitely not all Asriel’s is starting to trail down your shaft, catching on his fingertips and sliding around them lazily like especially thick raindrops on a glass window.

Asriel trails your head back up to kiss and nuzzle at the broad firm mound of his clit, and his eyes go unfocused as he cries out. “Chara _god_ you’re so warm, I want you so bad…”

He hitches his hips awkwardly back and forth right there, grinding, squeezing you gently between his fingers and palm, and then closes his eyes tight and moans long and high and loud, twitching against the tip of your cock. He’s shuddering all over as he sweeps you into the mouth of his pussy even as he comes, and as he sits there it feels less like he’s resting his weight over your hips and more like he’s greedily drinking you in, rippling walls pulling you deeper and tightening to keep you there. His wet spills all down your shaft ‘til you whimper and when he stops, kept by the awkwardness of your positions from swallowing you straight to the root, his lips tickle at the base of you nevertheless.

And he’s still coming. He doesn’t thrust, just sits still and raises his muzzle to the ceiling, moves his hands to grip his thigh and the sheets, whining and whining with his walls spasming and swirling around you. It takes maybe half a minute for him to relax, his pussy gone slack; he lowers his head again to smile at you. His tongue hangs out just a little as he pants, and his eyes are vacant and unfocused still. He blinks lazily, closes his mouth to swallow and then lets his jaw hang open again, just sits still all soft and drenched around you.

This is a terrible angle for you to thrust, and he did say that he’d do all the work today, and he’s probably still sensitive after his orgasm. So you adjust your grip on the sheets and watch him, breathing hard, trying unsuccessfully to keep your cock from twitching too badly inside him.

Finally he starts to rock where he sits, eyes fluttering closed, his smile widening. You make some squeaky helpless noise—even as his movements rub the tip and the rim and the length of your shaft against the front and back walls of his pussy, he gently pulls you, like he could fully envelop you and glue your bodies together at the hips forever from lust alone. It’s deliciously warm and silky, slippery and soft as a dream, but it’s not firm enough pressure or friction for you to come from it.

Asriel tilts his chin back and moans happily, a little over half howling wolf and the rest extreme self-satisfaction. _“God,_ Chara, I love when you’re getting close to coming and you get even _bigger._ Nothing fits me like your cock does. You’re _perfect.”_

You giggle a little, breathless and dizzy from the pleasure and the ache in your lower belly. “Ree, how many cocks have you tried to test that theory?”

“Why’ld I _wanna_ try anyone else’s?” he slurs, and shifts—lowers his head, stretches his arms out to plant his hands to either side of your shoulders, and leans down at an angle. You can feel him grip the mattress with the claws of his foot, hear the other set of claws scrape on the floor, and then he starts to rise and fall around you.

You think you swear—your balls are pounding too hard, waves of warmth and chill are enveloping your whole body, for you to really pay attention to the sounds coming out of your own mouth. Asriel laughs and starts to thrust harder, making the bedsprings squeak and producing riotous squelchy sounds around your shaft. You bounce on the mattress hard enough for your breasts to sway.

He shifts his right hand to rest it along your ribs, getting his thumb up over your nipple to roll and play with it, and—you do _not_ mean to make that helpless little trill, but the warmth of his finger and the heavy grooves of the squishy pad against you where you’re sensitive make your skin dance with electric little tingles. Heat shoots up the center of your stomach, lancing almost like pain.

Asriel is still moaning colorfully, crying bursts of nonsense in between his puffing breath: “Chara Chara Chara, rail me rail me _rail me_ god you’re so _hard_ pound me burn me _fill me up—”_

Your vision’s starting to blur with how hard it is not to come—Asriel’s walls squeeze and lave at you as his energetic bouncy thrusts rub your shaft, but he’s not clenching down on you yet, and you want him to come with you, it’s about all you _can_ do for him. You reach up with shaky hands, stroke your palms up and over his chest until you hit on his nipples and make him _yipe_ like a puppy. You try to be gentle as you pinch and pull, and oh, _there—_ his walls have begun to roll on you in great gulps, bright burning bruising tightness that makes your back arch.

Asriel squeezes your breast and you whine and wrestle one hand up to grip the back of his head, pull him down to kiss messily, suck on his long tongue like you could swallow it, seal your bodies into a ring.

“’Ara,” he cries into your mouth, and you curl your toes and let go while he’s still coming around you.

He keeps going for maybe half a minute after you empty out, the motion of his hips beginning to shudder and slow as your arms fall limp to lie on the mattress and across your stomach.

Asriel raises his head to let you both breathe, shifts his hand off your chest to better brace himself instead of risking collapsing on top of you. For your part, you look hazily up at him until a yawn overcomes you.

“I really needed that,” you say, and he smiles and bends down to nose your cheek affectionately.

 

 

After this you and Asriel trade places: He stacks both your pillows on top of each other to give his horns room and stretches out on his back, and you take only a few moments to wipe your dick dry to avoid its stickiness getting uncomfortable before lying on your front on top of him. It’s still hot and your sweat sticks his fur to your skin but he gently kneads your back with his fleshy pads to work out the knots in your muscles. You doze.

You’re roused once by the discomfort of your engorged cock getting pinched between you and Asriel’s soft stomach—you barely have to raise your head before he starts nodding enthusiastically. You scoot a little further down the mattress so as to best kneel between his legs as he spreads them, and thrust in. He comes three times on your cock with your mouth and hands on his chest, voice all raised in gladness like a drunk in prayer; you come twice, remember the first time to reach down and pinch the base of your dick so that you can come dry but too overwhelmed by the pleasure to remember to do it the second time. You wanted to spend your whole afternoon break curled up in Asriel’s warm welcoming arms and pussy, blocking out the rest of the world just for now with how good sex with him feels. Despite dashing your plans to literally keep fucking him nonstop until you’re too exhausted to continue, any disappointment is overruled by Asriel’s reaction: His voice goes all soft and cracked and shuddery, left leg twitching up against your flank as he cries _ohhhh god Chara yes yes please just empty your balls in me_.

You’ve never told him that he sounds like some character from a cheap erotic paperback because it’s just so _cute_ that he starts babbling this stuff when he feels so good his brain to mouth filter disengages. It’d be a shame if he tried to self-censor just because you think it’s silly.

You think you probably fall asleep again somewhere in the middle of being self-congratulatory for having learned self-restraint over the past eight or nine years, because you go straight from comfortable post-orgasmic haze to Asriel tapping your shoulder. When you lift your head, blinking, he’s panting and squirming underneath you.

“I’m really sorry to wake you, but,” and here he swallows: “Chara you’ve been hard for like fifteen minutes now and it’s making me _really really horny_ and if you don’t move I think I’m gonna die.”

You blink once, then twice, then grin and say “How about if you only die a _little_ bit?”

_“Charaaaaaaaaaaaaa,”_ Asriel whines, laughing. “Please please _yes.”_

By now you’re awake enough to feel how tight and wet he is already, so it’s with eagerness that you shift your legs to find a more comfortable pose. “All the paperwork you showed me said that some people who go on E stop being able to get it up,” you say, as nonchalant and conversational as you can make it. “I’m so fucking glad that I’m not one of those people.”

Asriel comes in three strokes, squeezing on you deliciously and howling: _“Oh god oh god yes YES Chara CHARA harder give me your cock—”_

BAM.

You’ve sat up on your heels on instinct and are already casting about for your knife by the time your brain registers that the horrible loud banging is the sound of someone’s fist pounding your front door. You remember that you left the knife on the floor by the door with your pants— _idiot!_ —and your mind’s scrambling to identify some other good weapon in easy reach when the banging stops, replaced by a gruff and angry human voice: “SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU GODDAMN HOMOS! IT’S THE MIDDLE OF THE AFTERNOON AND THE WHOLE FAMILY CAN HEAR YOU FROM DOWNSTAIRS, YOU SICK FREAKS!”

There’s another deafening SLAM that sounds like your downstairs neighbor has kicked the door or thrown something at it. Your throat is closing up and colorful spots are starting to speckle your vision—god, you are too old and have seen too fucking much to keep having this panic response, this could well be the day it kills you, and your best friend in the bargain—but then you can hear the tramp of angry footsteps getting softer as they grow more distant.

A warm furry hand touches your shoulder. You flinch. Asriel pulls back.

“I’m sorry, Chara,” he whispers. “I should have kept better track of the time.”

You shake your head. You’re shaking all over. “It’s not your fault there are so many people like _that_ here.”

You, too, keep your voice down. If you could at least sneak out and pick up your knife—but if they come back and break the door down and find you naked—

Five minutes pass, then ten. You don’t even hear any more footsteps out in the hall. You take a deep breath.

“I’m going to go clean up,” you say without looking at Asriel. “I need to get ready to go to work anyway.”

“Okay,” Asriel says. A pause. You don’t get up; you’re not sure your legs will hold you or if you’ll just collapse from lingering terror. “Do you want me to help?”

What the hell. “All right.”

The bathtub plug is broken and your landlady doesn’t care to fix it no matter how much you complain, so right now bathing generally consists of filling a bucket to pour water over your head and a basin to soak washcloths in for scrubbing. The cheap soap you can easily afford is very harsh on your hair, so you only wash it once a week—generally on weekends, when you have the extra time and energy since you don’t have to go work the wharf.

So you fill the bucket and basin and you stand in the tub and upend the bucket over your head. If the interruption hadn’t already killed your erection, this would’ve finished the job: It’s brutally cold. You’re still swearing under your breath when Asriel comes in to sit on the toilet seat: He’s got his pants back on and only the pants. Maybe he thinks his shirt has too many buttons, too.

“What would you like me to help with?” he asks, careful.

You hesitate. “If you could warm the water in the basin up I’d appreciate it. And help me wash my back? I can do my front well enough.”

“Okay. How warm do you want?”

“Luke, or a little colder. It’s too nasty out for hot water.”

“Gotcha.”

You perch on the lip of the tub, dip your washcloth, and start to run it over your arms, washing off the day’s sweat and the loose strands of Asriel’s fur that got stuck to you while you cuddled. Asriel warns you before he touches your back, which is simultaneously a relief and a source of shame.

“I cannot fucking _wait,”_ you manage after a few minutes have passed, “to move out of this horrible building.”

“How long d’you think it’s going to take to save up enough to move to the Castle City?” Asriel asks quietly, his hand slowing a little at the small of your back.

“With the two steady jobs I have now—omitting any windfalls and short-term jobs I might take in between—probably another two or three years,” you tell him, staring at cracks in the far wall’s whitewash. You even manage to keep any emotion out of your voice.

A brief pause here, one you don’t like. “Well, if you decide you can’t wait anymore—” you can’t help it, you tense— “I can spot you the rest of the money you need, and you can pay me back at your own pace.”

That’s better than you were expecting, but you still squint at the far wall as you pick fur out of your navel. “If it ever gets to that point. You know I don’t want to owe anyone money, not even you; I’d rather stick it out for as long as I can.”

“Okay,” Asriel says, just hesitant enough to let you know that he still doesn’t like it. He doesn’t comment any further, though, just changes the subject—“Is it okay with you if I dry your hair?”

You turn to look over your shoulder at him and smile. “Sure.”

He smiles back and touches your hair with one foreclaw. You close your eyes while his warm magic envelops your head just because it’s hard not to flinch when he emits silvery white fire even understanding that it’s harmless, but you squint one eye back open to watch him pull the lingering static away in stretchy miniature lightning bolts and eat it. Monsters are _weird._

Asriel clears out to go put his shirt back on, and you get out fresh underwear and pants of softer, more body-hugging fabric that sits on the changing angle of your hips less awkwardly than your work pants. Over these you pull on one of your night work shirts, short-sleeved and with thin enough fabric that it drapes over your breasts to show their small contours pretty clearly. The shirt is about the length of a tunic and hangs loose about your hips even with a belt fastened over it, so you don’t have to worry about hiding the prominent curve of your penis. (You used to think of yourself as having a high tolerance for pain, but your first and only attempt at tucking put paid to _that_ delusion. Yeah, no, you’d rather avoid trying that again if you can.)

After getting dressed, only makeup remains. Even the cheap stuff costs money, so you’re glad that hormones have softened the shape of your face somewhat; you don’t have to spend so much time and foundation obsessively masking your natural features. You still carefully blot out your dark circles and apply the strategic foundation and blush that make your cheeks look a little fuller and the arch of your nose seem less prominent, and put on a subtle layer of pink lipstick.

You narrow your eyes at yourself in the mirror. Asriel drying your hair always makes it look and feel softer and less frizzy than air-drying does, though not even _he_ can undo the sharp kink your morning ponytail puts in it just under your ears. Your hair has a soft natural wave to it that’s sort of the distant twice-removed cousin to your mother’s loose curls; you don’t want to let it grow long enough to really start to look full-time _girly_ if you can help it. The area between chin-length and shoulder-length is that magical androgynous zone where people won’t peg you for a man or woman just from looking at your hair, and where you can still make yourself seem as masculine or feminine as you need to depending on how you style it. Hanging loose around your face like this, all made up and dressed, you look passably pretty enough that no one’s going to bother you—especially in the dim lighting of the restaurant.

Back out in the living room Asriel is waiting by the window, dressed and with his basket all collected. He looks up when you enter; you gather up your shed laundry and clip your knife to your hip underneath your shirt, then go to him.

He opens up his arms, and you lean in for a hug, resting your chin on his shoulder. He squeezes just a little and then slackens his grip, but doesn’t let you go; you close your eyes and breathe in the closeness, the warmth of his care for you. “I’m sorry about today,” he murmurs. “I’m pretty sure I could deal with any trouble if I headed out the main entrance but I don’t want to get _you_ in trouble, so I’m just going to go out this way.”

“That works fine,” you tell him, and hesitate, clenching one hand on the back of his shirt so he’ll know not to let go. “Same time and place tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” he says, and nuzzles your ear. You hold on to each other for just a few moments more—and then you slacken your grip so he can pull free. Together you lift up the heavy window, and Asriel climbs out. The brickwork is old and shabby along the back side of the apartments, riddled with vines; even if not for that, Asriel can fly for a few short moments if he really has to. He’ll be fine sneaking out the back way.

For a moment you want to grab the front of his shirt and kiss him, but before you can really examine that urge, Asriel smiles at you and starts picking his way down.

You watch him until he’s safely set foot into the alley and has disappeared around the corner. Then you shut the window and sit down heavily on the ugly old couch. It is tatty and not at all to your taste—ninety percent of your furniture belongs to your landlady and you won’t be taking it with you whenever you move out—but at least it’s not too uncomfortable.

You close your eyes tight and laugh, because the alternative would ruin your makeup.

 

 

Bussing tables is a _much_ less physically taxing job than dock work.

Your _balance_ is tested when you have to carry large platters of customer orders, and your _memory_ is tested when it comes to said customers’ seating arrangements and the contents of said orders. Your _patience_ is very much tested by the number of drunken men who linger throughout the restaurant as the night wears on, as is your tolerance for smells you find abhorrent; too many people love the cheesy baked spinach dishes for you to be able to convince the cooks to stop offering them, though thankfully no one blinks if you take a minute or so to step out back and clear your head.

Your pay is also far from glamorous, maybe about a quarter of what you make from the docks, and you get your salary biweekly. You’re allowed to just pocket tips, but no one ten years or more older than you bothers to tip the right amount.

But it’s less physically taxing than dock work. You get to sit in between carrying orders and checking on customers, and most importantly, all staff workers get a meal for free at the end of the day—which is thankfully quite close by now. This means that you get to avoid having to pay for more than a single meal per day, and the money you save doing this is helping to build up your Get Chara No-Last-Name Out Of This Horrible Dump And Into A More Trans Jew Friendly (And Also, Interspecies Makeouts Friendly) Environment fund.

So, though you spend every single shift desperately fantasizing about closing time, you are fairly sure that you will continue to keep this job unless you find something equally nonstrenuous that pays a great deal more to slot into nights.

“Juuuuuudyyyyyyyy,” some drunk customer singsongs from behind you, and the hair stands up on the back of your neck, and you step very quickly forward and to the side just in case because you do not want to take risks when you have this degree of bad feeling. “Aw, c’mon, baby, don’t be shy—”

There’s a sharp slap that momentarily silences the entire restaurant. Stiffly, you turn to see that it’s Sallie who arrived to champion you. She’s the whitest person you’ve ever seen in your life, with great masses of blond hair, gigantic breasts and hips, and even _more_ gigantic biceps. She has some sort of day job involving physical labor, and you’re very curious but you have never quite gotten the courage up to ask.

“Your server’s name is Judith, not ‘Judy’,” she informs the man in a very mild voice. “She is not your baby, and this is the second time you have attempted to grab her ass tonight that I have seen.” Your skin crawls and your stomach rolls, a little—you didn’t even notice a first time. “If you try this with _any_ woman here again I am reporting you to the manager’s wife and you will be banned from the premises for the next year. _Leave her alone._ Do I make myself clear?”

The drunken man, whose cheek is swelling up from the force of Sallie’s blow, mumbles something rude but doesn’t otherwise argue. Sallie looks down her nose at him and comes to collect you, steering you towards the servers’ waiting area in the back. Conversation starts up quietly just as she gets you through the little saloon doors.

“Trade tables with me,” she says. “I’ll handle _him._ We can swap orders in a second, I’m going to go tell my tables what’s going on.” She turns to leave and then pauses, peering down into your face—Sallie is _tall,_ taller than Asriel—and frowning. “On second thought, maybe you’d better take a few minutes out back before you come back in.”

You nod jerkily, unable to speak. A whole day’s worth of nerves is making you shiver all over, so that the slate and chalk you carry to mark down orders are beginning to clatter in your hands. You don’t want anyone’s goddamn hands on your body unless you’ve given them explicit permission to be there, just as a general matter; you’re also painfully aware that if somebody aims for your hips or crotch and gets a fistful of dick things will get extremely ugly extremely _quickly._

You’re not alone in back—Keesha is there too, smoking. She stubs her cigarette out when you sit on the steps, then follows up this small act of kindness by saying, “Somebody try to feel you up _again?_ Girl, when are you gonna get more assertive? If you’d just show ‘em some hell they’d lay off you right quick.”

The noise that leaves your mouth is some strangled, squawky thing that’s only vaguely in the same family as a laugh. “I believe that if I killed a customer or threatened to do so I would be out on my ear immediately due to how terrible that would be for our reputation,” you say mildly.

Keesha laughs at this. “Not like I don’t understand the feeling, but you really need to figure out the concept of _middle ground._ Just punch ‘em like Sallie does, or find something else to do along those lines.”

Some of the men who eat here don’t deserve middle ground, you are very sure. You’ve had literal actual johns who were politer and more respectful of your boundaries. But there’s no use mentioning that out loud, so you just hug your knees and glare at the night. No amount of knowing it’s an unrealistic solution that isn’t going to fix your problems can stop you from wanting Asriel to just appear in front of you and swoop you up in his arms, carry you away to some safe place where you’ll never have to worry about any of today’s troubles ever again.

The door behind you opens, clacking heels announcing Sallie before she sits in between you and Keesha. “Here,” she says to you, offering a fistful of crushed mint. You hold out a palm for her to drop it into, and lift it to your nose to smell; the strong scent clears your head and makes you feel steadier. “I’m sorry about that total shithole. From what his whole table was gossiping about, they either participated in or are fans of the riot on West Side from last night and they’re feeling full of themselves. They’re on their way out. You can have their tips and the ones from my tables too, you need them more than I do.”

When you look over her, Keesha on her other side has got a face on like it must be nice to be able to turn your tips over for charity. You feel the same way, but you try to smile and say “All right, just this once” before you go back to smelling the mint.

“What’s this riot about?” Keesha asks instead of commenting on Sallie sacrificing her tips.

Sallie makes a face. “Humans making me embarrassed that we’re the same species, that’s all. It’s nothing that deserves our attention.”

“So………… anti-monster garbage again, or humans putting down their fellow homo sapiens?” Keesha presses.

“The first one. It is _thoroughly_ stupid and I want to see if I can get these people banned from the premises just on grounds of if they keep being here loudly they’re going to scare off any potential monster customers, and everyone knows monsters tip better than humans.”

“Amen,” says Keesha. You groan and press your face into your knees. Today is _very_ much trying to give you an ulcer.

“Once the tables I’m getting from Sallie leave, can I hide out here until closing time,” you ask your thighs.

“Sure thing,” says Keesha. “You don’t look so great, and hey, that means more tips for the rest of us.”

Despite yourself, you smile; her pragmatism is a philosophy you relate to.

 

 

Sallie and Keesha send you home with a whole baggie of fresh mint—“Pour a little water on it to rehydrate it, and eating it after you crush it will help settle your stomach,” Sallie advises—and you stay in well-lit places on the way back to your apartment. You bar the door with chairs, just in case, and bring your knife to the bedroom so you’ll have it within easy reach.

You’ve gotten into bed and are reaching to turn the lights down when you remember your resolution to maintain your arms by doing push-ups, and then you groan and get down on the floor. You do not keep count. Being worn out physically will help you sleep, and the more you work out the more strength you’re going to retain, right?

So your arms and wrists ache dully by the time you crawl back into bed and turn the light off. At least, you tell yourself, you’re going to get to see Asriel again tomorrow and you’ll get to be together for a while.

Maybe—if you don’t get too sidetracked in bed—you can even use tomorrow afternoon to do some discreet job hunting, so you’ll be able to put in your three weeks’ notice at the restaurant. Sallie and Keesha are all right but you have your doubts that you’re going to be able to handle the customers’ bad behavior forever.

You of all people know better than anyone that it’s best to have an escape route ready before calamity strikes.


	2. collapsing proudly beneath a thousand dunes

The door is whole and untouched when you get up in the morning, everything where you left it, and this makes you feel a very slight bit better about the general state of your existence. You never did manage to do laundry, so you’re stuck with another heavy long-sleeved shirt, but you lived through yesterday and you’ll live through today too.

You clip your knife and your canteen to your belt, drip some water onto the last of Sallie’s mint and eat it, slip outside and lock up and pad down the stairs in cautious steps.

The Lower City’s almost lovely at five thirty. For all its name Mt. Ebott is more of a hill than a proper mountain like those visible on the far horizon, it can’t really block out the light the way books say tall mountains do, but it parts the sunrise like a rich lady’s curtains, and mist often curls up off the river that shares the mountain’s name. There’s still some bustle in the streets—night workers slouching home to their beds, street vendors setting up their wares, other people whose jobs require early rising like yours.

Almost everyone here is human, which is not a surprise. The Lower City can be dangerous for monsters if they aren’t in groups. You only find monsters in places like this if it’s the middle of the day and everyone is out, or if it’s an hour when no one is.

The main exception is the rabbit monster who runs one of the food stalls, who has multiple members of her family as well as some friends helping to prepare her wares. She recognizes you and gives you a one-coin discount on the hot cherry tart you buy for breakfast. It’s not particularly large, but the fruit is good for you and the carbs will give you energy to last the day and it’s also not heavy enough to make you sick while you’re hauling whatever beastly heavy object back and forth over the docks. Plus (and this is a fairly good plus, in your opinion) it tastes nice.

Whatever Asriel brings you for lunch will be more substantial, anyway—though, maybe that means you _do_ need to start looking for either weekend gigs or a better night job. Aside from being able to put more money away with a bigger paycheck, you might also be able to start funding more of your own meals. You have no choice but to rely on Asriel for your estradiol, you don’t even know where he gets it and he refuses to tell you how expensive it is because he doesn’t want you to “freak out” about it, but food is at least something that you have an idea of where to get on your own when you’re able to afford it.

Mind still taken up by these cheerful topics, you turn at the fountain and head for the docks. You let your steps slow a little as you approach the gravel yard and the storehouses, look over your shoulder at the city and the mountain and the sky behind it all.

You’ve heard guests at the wharf say that from far enough away Spiral City looks like a heart, like a human soul, the tiers of proud walls encircling the two castles and their respective towns giving way to the lower, smaller, earthier buildings that sprawl out at their skirts, then the farmhouses melting into the fields. The castles both crawl up the base of Mt. Ebott’s slopes—not quite all the way up to the top of the mountain, you wandered off into the edge of the forest more than once with Asriel when you were younger, you know there’s got to be hours’ worth of climb still if you got a rope and rappelled down from behind the castle walls. But the height is supposed to lend to that impression.

Standing at the edge of the docks you’ve been able to see a little of what those travelers mean about the city’s shape. But thinking about the drunks from last night and what Sallie said they were celebrating, it puts you more in mind of something you read about at the library once.

Sometimes when a person is pregnant with twins and the embryos are too close together in the womb or don’t separate all the way, they grow fused together—sometimes sharing limbs, sometimes multiple vital organs. Conjoined twins, as they’re called, are sometimes able to be separated safely through risky surgery, and are sometimes able to coexist stuck together. But sometimes the strain of keeping two people alive on a single heart or liver is too much, and the twins instead wind up killing one another slowly, rotting from the inside out.

Many of your coworkers, and maybe even Asriel, would call you melodramatic for the comparison, say that your misanthropy skews your perception. So you’ll keep it to yourself, but you don’t think the uneasy feeling slotted through your spine is just your anxiety speaking.

You can’t wait to nurse this foul mood all morning through your hours and hours of hauling heavy sacks and boxes and whatever the hell else. With a sigh, you face forwards and step carefully over cobblestones and gravel towards the riverside.

“Asher,” you hear a stern voice call, and turn towards it: Emil. “Come here a moment, lad.”

A little warily, steps slowing, you obey. You’ve never arrived earlier than him in any of your years working here—he lives in a building beside the lighthouse, so of course he can get to work _quickly,_ but it’s also devotion to the job. Emil takes his work very seriously; he’s the one who impressed on you how vital it is to transport crops and other goods down the river.

He doesn’t often call you aside for private conferences, though, he’s usually too busy directing the flow of everyone’s work. Your stomach squirms as he frowns down at you, making you very glad indeed that your breakfast was monster food.

“Your productivity has been going down for months,” Emil says, gruff and low. There is no anger in his face but needles of cold bristle through your insides anyway. “It’s very unusual, that someone who works here will slowly be able to lift less and less weight. An illness, or an injury, I thought, but you keep getting worse. By the day, it seems like. You’ve been working here for years, Asher, you keep your head down and you don’t complain. I don’t like to do this, but…”

You begin to shake your head slowly. “Emil, I—I’m working out, I’ll make the muscle mass back up, I. Please.”

“This is for your sake,” Emil goes on, inexorable. “You’re still getting worse, and the next time you drop something it could be something that we can’t afford going into the river. You could permanently maim yourself, even kill yourself, in a truly bad accident. Until whatever is happening with you stabilizes and you get your strength back, you can’t work here safely.”

The crags of his windburnt face are stiff with regret and your ears are ringing, you can’t feel your skin, you can only tell that you’re shaking by the way your breath shudders through your lips.

“Come back in the fall, or next year,” Emil says. He sticks one hand into his pocket and comes out with a drawn pouch. You don’t mean for your hands to raise to accept it but they do anyway, automatic. This scene feels too real, viewed at a distance through a veneer of crystal that makes the edges too sharp. You nearly drop the pouch. “Or on days when the weather is bad and we need someone to work the lighthouse constantly. This is your severance pay, what you ought to have made for the next month. You’re a good boy, Asher. I just don’t want you getting hurt. I hope I can see you back here again when things are settled.”

He reaches out to pat your shoulder. The hand is heavy. You wobble underneath it.

There’s a _moment_ where you think you have the chance to protest, where you could—could plead or fly into a rage, _explain,_ tell Emil that his _kindness_ means that you will be unable to make rent without devastating your savings. All you ever _wanted_ was to get out of this _fucking_ neighborhood to somewhere safer. This could force you back into walking the streets at night. This could mean _sleeping_ on them.

But you have no idea how to appeal to him in a way that will actually be successful, and while you stand frozen with all the words stuck in your throat, Emil pats your shoulder one more time. He lifts the hand from your body and turns his back and walks away, each footfall crunching on the gravel. Soft then softer then inaudible. He doesn’t look back.

 

 

Your feet carry you to the bank while you’re still in a daze; you have a very polite conversation with the teller about putting your severance pay safely away without being more than a tenth present for it. After this you return to the streets and you wander, because moving is better than staying still. If you stay still you’ll have to think. You don’t want to think. You don’t want to think about how screwed you are and panic, even though you know you need to eventually, or you won’t be able to land on your feet this time.

Instead—the next step. What’s the next step, so that you can focus on it, not give yourself _time_ to break down.

You need a new day job, obviously. You can look to see who’s hiring. You planned to, for a replacement for the restaurant, which you suppose you’ll no longer be able to replace. You’ll have mornings to look and should start today, gather options, consider them.

Your older jobs will be good places to start. At least the ones of them that were all right. Stagger and nearly run into the person walking past you, towards the library. Not sure where you are for a moment. Have to stare around to get your bearings, nearly get a headache from all the noise and color. It will be quieter there.

Absently, reach up to blot sweat from your cheeks and forehead, water from under your eyes. Your fingers catch and scratch on ragged stubble. You’ll have to confine yourself to jobs you worked as a man, then, until you have the chance to return to your apartment and shave. You don’t really want to return to your apartment right now.

The library is in one of the nicer districts, where the Lower City starts to give way to the homes of the middle class, historic buildings snapped up piecemeal by local trade schools. There are storefronts that you miss, replaced by large white houses with neat gardens where well-off humans live. A great deal of those stores’ owners lived in apartments above their workplaces. You doubt that they still live in the area now. They will have been chased off into the Lower City by richer humans, or left down the river to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Perhaps some sought asylum in the monsters’ castle, if they had monster neighbors or customers who they were friendly enough with to vouch for them. For your part you do not understand why monsters are still offering kindnesses to humans at all. If _you_ were in their place you would have washed your hands of your homo sapien neighbors years ago, after the terrorists.

But if the monsters had washed their hands of humans then you would not be friends with Asriel; you would not be here at all, very likely. Much of your survival owes itself to your own grit but without his support it would have been difficult to keep a determined heart through your lowest moments.

You enter the library. They have fans, designed as a gesture of goodwill by the monsters’ Royal Scientist and kept running by the sunlight on the building roof, and that means the indoors are significantly cooler than the summer heat outside. You pause in the quiet of the entryway to wipe your face again, untie your hair and comb your fingers through it and tie it again, lower, neat again. It will not do you any favors to walk in glassy-eyed and desperate.

The receptionist frowns at you anyway. “Can I help you, sir?” she says, making _sir_ sound like an insult in the way her lips frame it as dubious. You don’t recognize her, though you come here now and again in your down time when Asriel can’t stay because books are almost as nice an escape and learning’s always useful.

You smile at her even so. “Hello, miss. I’d like to inquire about work.”

She wrinkles her forehead and purses her mouth at you. The neck of your shirt is probably sweaty from having been outside, and your armpits too. You should have gone home and changed first instead of rushing right into an interview. “I don’t believe we have any sort of ‘now hiring’ sign outside.”

You keep smiling. The restaurant has given you all the practice in the world at this. “You may very well be correct, but I have worked here before on several occasions. Some of my services are more specialized, and I find it’s best to ask if the library has need of them.”

You can just _see_ on her smooth well-bred pampered white face that she’s already made her mind up to chase you out and is just trying to decide how best to do it, if a lofty enough order will serve to cow you or if she’ll need to call for help from a bigger stronger colleague to chase this filthy low-born man who might well be dangerous from her soft clean sanctuary. You wonder a little how early you ought to leave. You would like to keep coming to the library at your leisure and if this woman is determined to be your enemy you don’t want her to remember your face.

A door behind her opens and Omar steps out. His eyes widen as they settle on you. “Avraham? Good gracious, son, is that you?”

The receptionist half turns in her seat. “Sir, do you know this man?”

“Of course,” says Omar, planting his hands on his hips and raising his eyebrows down at her. “Avraham worked the shelves when he was just a little lad, and he’s helped us more than once to transcribe damaged documents. I taught him to type myself. What brings you here today, son? When you come to read you can usually find what you’re after yourself.”

You bow your head to him graciously, and carefully don’t look smug about how the receptionist’s smile has gone all vacant. She clearly doesn’t like this turn of events and has decided to dislike you but isn’t willing to raise a fuss when her superior clearly likes you. There’s no need to rub it in, especially if you’re going to become her coworker.

“I’ve recently found myself with time on my hands, and so I decided to come here to see if there’s anything you might need help with, positions you need filling,” you say mildly. It’s more politic than throwing yourself at his feet and begging for help, which you don’t want to do in front of the snobby receptionist anyway. “I would be available mornings any day of the week, even Saturdays, although you know they aren’t my preference.”

Omar’s face creases, and your heart sinks even before he answers. “Ach, Avi, I’m very sorry, we don’t have openings right now. We _are_ expecting a new shipment of documents next month, though, so if you’re still looking then, or even if you’d just like the extra cash, feel free to drop by. You’ll be compensated very handsomely, especially since you’re one of our best workers.”

“I’d be very happy to take you up on it if I can,” you say, maintaining your smile. Omar holds out a hand and you clasp it rather than let him think you’re disappointed—or what you really are, which is panicked. “Thank you for letting me know.”

You leave with a polite nod and wave to Omar and the receptionist. Once you’re outside you sit on the steps, give yourself just a moment to breathe until your hands have stopped shaking. Then you push yourself up and get back on the move.

It’s the same story everywhere else you try: At the greengrocer’s, at the carpenter’s, at the bookstore. They greet you by the names you used when you worked with them, welcoming and friendly—in some cases it’s been years since you worked with them. And they all apologize that they have nothing they can offer you right now. Come back in a few months, they say, or worse, next year; they’ll have work for you then. You smile and you thank them and you walk away, feeling a little more like a flower crushed in a careless hand each time.

It’s nearly noon. Your restless feet have taken you back to the plaza with all the food stalls, and seeing the rabbit vendor with no line in front of hers you drift back over to her. She’s set up a sign that says she and the two younger rabbits, her cousin and his son, will be on break until their next round of pastries are done.

“Hiya, kiddo,” she says, smiling at you from under the brim of her sunhat. “The first pastries ought to be done in another ten or fifteen minutes, if you don’t mind waiting. You could beat the line that way.”

You thank her for the offer. “I’m not very hungry just now, though.”

She makes a soft sympathetic noise. “Yeah? I admit, I’m surprised to see you with such a long face. Usually at this time of day you seem pretty happy, to be off work and getting to see your… your friend,” she finishes with a wink. This gets you to smile a little too. As well-known as it seems to be that Asriel keeps coming out into town to visit with you, none of the monsters who are aware seem to mind.

“I don’t suppose _you_ would happen to be hiring, would you?” You’re fairly sure you’ve seen a human working at her food stall before, a kid about the same age as you with curly black hair and light brown skin, but you haven’t seen them around lately.

The rabbit raises her eyebrows at you and then narrows her eyes slightly. The set of her mouth is grim, and she leans over the counter, raising one paw so that no one will see her mouth move.

“We’re actually going to be closing three days from now. We’re moving the business back to the castle town—my sister runs an inn there, she’s lending us a room to work out of. They always need new workers, in the town.”

 _“What?”_ You keep your own voice to a whisper. “Why now? You always have _huge_ lines. It can’t be a matter of business being poor.”

“It’s the riots,” she says. “They’re getting more frequent, and there are more people in them, and last Sunday the Eyewalkers’ candy shop got its windows smashed. Rioters stole everything there was in the till. If they hadn’t been out visiting family…” She shakes her head and glances back over her shoulder at her nephew. “Growing up in fear isn’t good for kids that age, anyway. Nowhere is really safe if you’re a monster, but it’s much safer in the castle.” She leans back into her seat and smiles at you lopsided, looking tired. “You can always come visit though, hey? I’m sure your friend would be happy to bring you.”

You try to smile back at her. “I’d like that. But—you’re right. I’ll miss your pastries if things don’t work out, but I’ll feel better knowing that you’re further away from harm’s reach.”

She waves to you as you leave, and you smile over your shoulder at her until you turn the corner. It hurts your head, to have your blood run hot and cold like this. You hate this stupid city so much you could die of it. Humans are scum.

When you get to the square where the great sore thumb of how terribly this place fails to live up to its own tenets stands cast in bronze, Asriel is sitting there just like he was yesterday, idly kicking his feet like he hasn’t got a care in all the world. Your body is properly made of meat and water and so you don’t rip in two and dissolve at the pain that suddenly assails you, but you wish you could. He has _so_ many stupid little buttons, and you’ve never seen a store you can afford to shop at selling clothes that perfect shade of lavender.

His eyes light on you before you’ve made another step towards him, and his whole aspect brightens. He pops up to his feet like a child promised a gift. “Chara!” he calls over the crowds.

You take one step towards him, then another, then another, slow and painful. Asriel’s expression changes, goes confused and then searching and then he’s elbowing gently past people to get to you.

He reaches out and takes your hands in his, soft, grip light. His usual lunch basket is hung over one arm and it dangles awkwardly between you. “Chara, what’s wrong?”

You can’t look him in the face. You stand with your hands in his and stare at his chest. Your knees are shaking, your chest beginning to heave. You can’t do this.

“Chara?” he asks again, very gently. There’s a roaring in your ears and you’re breathing too fast and too shallowly, your heart loud in your chest.

“I think I need to sit,” you hear yourself say distantly. Asriel gently loops his right arm through your left, not releasing your right hand, and leads you trembling to the statue like a newly born lamb. He eases you down onto your behind, leaning against the sun-warmed robes of the Peacemaker. He kneels in front of you and rests the basket on his lap, running his fingertips in gentle circles over your palms. You try to breathe deeply and steadily so that you won’t faint.

“Chara?” Asriel says a third time. You squeeze your eyes shut. If you tell him here, it will all be real.

That thought is foolish. It’s _already_ real, and running away from accepting it isn’t going to help you any. You open your eyes. Asriel is watching you, eyes round and doleful and soft with concern. You take a deep breath.

“I got fired this morning.” Your voice comes out very small. Asriel draws in a sharp breath and squeezes your hands but doesn’t interrupt. “My boss has noticed me struggling over the past several months. He told me I could come back if I get things ‘sorted out’ and handed me a month’s severance pay. I have spent,” you go on, hating the way your words tremble, “all morning visiting every half-decent place I’ve worked looking like—like this. None of them are hiring. It was all ‘come back in a few months’ or ‘try next year’.

“The restaurant doesn’t pay well enough for me to keep making rent. If I don’t get a job that pays as steady as the docks or better, all my savings are going to _vanish_ into my rent. Forget moving out of here, I’ll be lucky just to be able to _stay_ here.” You curl your hands into fists under Asriel’s fingers, grip your own palms tightly. “If none of my other previous employers want me back—if no one decent is hiring—I don’t like my options. I’ll go back to streetwalking if I have to but I don’t _want_ to, I was so _happy_ to have steady enough jobs that I didn’t have to—” You swallow the rather crude expression you were about to use to describe your old work, which would probably have turned more than a few heads in the crowd, but this gives your face room to crumple instead, which is almost worse. “I don’t know what to do.”

Asriel shifts to hold both your fists in one hand and reaches up to touch your face, which is wet. You squeeze your eyes closed again, shivering. You feel cold all over despite the summer heat and the rushing sound is returning to your ears. There’s no _point_ in complaining to Asriel because all he’s going to do is offer the same damn non-solutions as usual. The thought of repeating the same old argument at a time like this only makes your face leak worse.

“You haven’t exhausted all your options _yet,”_ Asriel says all low and kind. You want to tell him that you fucking know that and not to patronize you but your throat is clogged with tears you’d rather die than let fall, so the words have no way to get out. “Have you eaten at all since breakfast?”

You shake your head no, of course not, _idiot,_ you have to save money. Asriel trails his thumb over your cheek. You feel like your skull has turned to concrete and like your spirit is about to dislodge from it. “Let’s have lunch, then. It probably sounds really silly but you’ll feel better after you’ve eaten, I promise.”

You shake your head harder. Asriel squeezes your hands. “Chara, you _need_ to eat at least a little, and take your pill.”

“I feel too sick to eat,” you croak. If your body won’t take lunch you’ll be out of luck until dinner, and just thinking about trying to work the restaurant while nauseous and panicked and starving is making your whole body lock up in refusal.

“Please, Chara. A little cool water, or some sugar, or some mint. It’ll settle your stomach and then you can eat more later.”

You don’t answer. You can’t stop shaking, your hands and feet in particular feel frozen, your heart is knocking on your ribs and you’re breathing too fast and you’re dizzy and your ears are ringing and your stomach hurts.

“Hey,” Asriel says even more softly. “Shall we just go somewhere more quiet so that you can relax?”

“I don’t—want to—go back,” you manage, “to my—apartment.”

“There’s a park in my side of the castle town that I was thinking of,” he says. “There’s shade and water and it won’t be crowded. I promise you won’t have a bunch of people bothering you there. We’ll have to walk, but it’ll be better than here—do you think you can make it?”

You screw up your face and take a deep breath, let it out in a huff. “Yeah. Fuck it. I’ll try.”

Asriel breathes out long and slow and the relief is palpable in his voice when he says, “Okay. Thanks for humoring me, Chara. Let’s go.”

He bears you up in the crook of his arm again, and you walk. You keep your eyes low so that the press of bodies and the riot of colors won’t make you any dizzier than you already are.

There are gates leading to the castle towns proper, where guards are supposed to check to make sure that no one is carrying weapons in or out who should not be. With Asriel as your carte blanche, your knife gets to stay on its hip without much question. Humans may not recognize him in a crowd, but there isn’t a monster in this city who does not know who he is, and that he’s with you seems to be good enough for the rabbit and dragon in plate mail who stand on either side of the portcullis. They wave you through.

Here lies one of the disparities of Spiral City. The human castle is populated by the nobility and their servants; its castle town is occupied by the wealthy upper class—lesser nobility, rich merchant families and distinguished tradespeople—as well as those of the middle classes that have the money and luck to afford housing there. The rest of the middle class lives as close to the city walls as they can, though the poorer amongst them are driven further into the Lower City by the rich buying up land and property for their personal pleasures, and the poor chased deeper into the slums.

The entire monster population of Spiral City lives within the castle district’s protective walls. Many of them _work_ in the Lower City, but none of them lodge there—not even for a night’s stay, if they can help it. Those who move away from the city or leave on ferries to vacation go to other monster communities, or ones with a strong Boss Monster dynasty like the Dreemurrs here, who will have an easier time physically standing up to humans.

Your mother played wolves and sheep puzzles with you when you were very young, to teach you the theory before she had to explain the ways it applied to you. So it’s easy to recognize when you see the monsters doing the same thing.

There are some small pockets of humans who live here in the monsters’ castle city—mostly vulnerable people, those who feel more at home with monsters’ view of gender and sexuality, or minorities seeking relief from the prejudice of the rich and privileged. You want to be among those asylum seekers more than anything, safe behind the gate when it shuts for the night. You’d never have to bar your door shut _here._

It smells nicer here, behind the walls; significantly less raw garbage left out in cramped streets to bake in the sun, better maintained. There are fewer voices, fewer footsteps, and the cobbles under your feet are evenly laid instead of cracked and crumbling with grass sprouting up through them. Asriel keeps steering you up the widest street at a steady pace. You raise your eyes a little from time to time; monsters going about their business turn to look at you for a moment, then return to whatever they were doing without seeming to care.

You highly doubt that Asriel drags humans through here regularly—he can’t have the time, between seeing you daily and the tasks he _does_ have and takes care of when he isn’t with you—so you suppose they must simply trust him. This does not make you feel very much better.

Asriel leads you on uphill, through another gate guarded by armored dogs who look up from their card game to wave you through and then to the castle gates proper. Aside from the time of day it doesn’t look much different from the only other occasion you’ve been here. Remembering that happy instance, you try to dig your heels into the well-groomed cobbles, but you’re shaky still with shock and panic and Asriel just sweeps you onwards.

“Relax,” he says gently. “It’s just the gardens.”

“If your parents see me,” you manage to get out in a small tight hiss.

Asriel shakes his head. “Mom’s busy with court. Dad… even if he notices, I doubt he’s going to care.”

And he whisks you across the castle lawn, across one and then a second of those outdoor corridors that have high vaulted roofs held up by pillars but no walls. Before you have the chance to protest all the very good reasons that Asgore Dreemurr has to care about _any_ human being in his castle, let alone you, the two of you have already arrived at your destination.

The royal gardens must be only a small part of the castle, but even walled off as they are, the expanse of soft green seems vast. There are generous patches of flowers separated from the lawn by stones, everything from local plants you recognize—lupine, golden flowers, daisies and queen anne’s lace—to great hydrangea and lilac bushes, lilies and poppies. There are greenhouses at the edge of your vision where medicinal herbs and fruit-bearing plants must be stored, along with exotic plants of delicate temperament that can’t be stored out in the open air here in the wrong climate. The pond Asriel promised is closer to the wall of the castle itself, and little brooks crisscross the green, probably there to help irrigate the plants.

It is _very_ quiet here. The only noise is your footsteps and Asriel’s on the grass, the wind rustling plant leaves, the soft burble of the water, and the chirping of birds that must be perched on the walls or in some tree somewhere. Distantly a waterwheel turns.

The Lower City is never this quiet, not even at night; through your apartment walls there’s always the distant sound of animal calls, people talking or walking or fucking. You aren’t sure if you like this silence.

Asriel leads you to the shade of a small tree at the edge of the water and sits. His lovely cream-colored breeches are going to get coated in grass stains, but he doesn’t seem to care. He sets his basket down and pats the grass beside him. You sit.

“You can take your boots off and put your feet in the water,” he says. “It’s cold. It’s really nice.”

You undo your laces and slowly pull off your left boot, lower your foot until just the pad is touching. You nearly pull your foot back and overbalance yourself out of reflex. Asriel was being modest, if anything. You set your foot all the way down, until you’re prickling with gooseflesh everywhere. Your hands shake on the laces of your other boot and your teeth are chattering by the time you set your other foot in. The water pulls gently at your heels. Asriel sets his feet in beside you with a hearty _plunk_ that sounds like a rock being dropped into a river from a bridge. Water droplets fly up in a rough little crown. His feet are large since his new growth spurt started; he has not fully grown into them.

“Is this better?” he asks.

You take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “No one will bother us here?”

“No. Gardeners might come by, or guards, but they’ll keep their distance unless you or I call them over. Nobody’s here right now to listen in.”

At least you have this reassurance that people aren’t waiting to pounce on you from the shadows. You’d suspect this less of monsters than of humans, but constant fear is a hard habit to break. You sigh and lie on your back, squinting up through the tree’s leaves at blinding flashes of sunlight and patches of blue sky.

“How are you feeling right now?” Asriel presses.

“Well, my testicles are currently trying to make a nice warm nest in my intestines because the water hasn’t clued in that it’s summer yet, and that’s at least serving as _some_ distraction.” This startles a laugh out of Asriel, and you smile a little despite yourself. It shudders and crumples on your mouth. “I wish you had warned me that you wanted to take me here before we were walking up to the castle grounds, Ree. My stomach hurts a lot and I don’t know how much of that is from me freaking out over the matter at hand versus how much is from me thinking of your mother’s expression the last time I was here.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “There are some other parks in Castle Town but they’ll have kids in them and stuff. I thought this would be better.” He pauses. “I… Mom understands that you only did what you did because you were scared.”

“Nevertheless, she made her opinion on my trying to conceal the actual cause of my illness very clear.”

“She was sorry.”

“Her Majesty may well have been. I don’t remember it, on account of having been half delirious with terror and/or unconscious so that I wouldn’t fight her scouring my digestive system clean of poison and infection both.”

Asriel lets this point stand. You close your eyes and fold your hands together over the base of your ribs, pressing your nails into your skin.

“I don’t want to go back to sucking dick for a living,” you tell the sky and the tree and your best friend very quietly. “I will if I have to because it pays, but I don’t want to. I’ve known people who enjoy sex work, but even when the clients are decent I hate it. I like having sex with you, but I find sex with people I’m not on _very_ friendly terms with incredibly unpleasant.

“I’m old enough to apply for a job in the red light district this time, but I would have to do a _lot_ of research into which whorehouses actually take care of you and which are worse than taking your chances on the streets. I don’t know if any of the reputable ones will hire a person with both breasts and a penis without then treating me as an exotic new attraction. I don’t know how many places will let me be choosy about the sex acts I’m willing to perform, either. I have to do the reconnaissance and I have to weigh the costs and benefits carefully and I have to start thinking about this _before_ my severance pay runs out so that I’ll have a decision made in time.

“I want to crawl into a grave right now, Asriel. I don’t want to think about this at all. I want my job back, or I at least want to go strangle Emil. I cannot _believe_ that bastard thought he was doing me a kindness.”

Asriel is quiet for what feels like a long while. “I wish it was just pride,” he says softly, “that makes you feel like you shouldn’t accept my help, so that I could properly be angry at you for it. I _know_ it’s not,” he says with an edge of warning before you can protest. “But, Chara, the idea of you going back to soliciting johns on the street really scares me. You may well have horror stories that you never shared with me, but the one close call was enough. If it starts looking like that’s your best and only option, _please_ let me help you however much you need to prevent that, okay? I swear I’ll keep it as minimal as you need to not break out in hives, just—it’s maddening to have all these resources available and for you to keep refusing them.”

And you _do_ want him to just wave his hand and make all your problems disappear by virtue of his status and his money, it’s just—you saw for yourself where depending entirely on one person got your mother.

You’re tired of having this argument, though, so you just sigh and say, “If it looks like it’s going to come down to that, I’ll consider it.”

“Okay.” Beside you Asriel relaxes. You feel the water currents shift as he kicks his feet, hear the little splashes, listen to some bird calls. You think you recognize the high-pitched squeaks of a cardinal, but don’t open your eyes to look for it. The grass is tickling the back of your neck. The soft rustle of the wind is very peaceful but having snatches of conversation to listen in on would be better for your mind right now, you think; it wants something to worry. “Do you think you can try just drinking some water? I _swear_ it’ll make you feel better.”

You roll your eyes and consent long-suffering to drinking water in very small sips. You wait for five minutes, then ten; it stays down. Asriel parcels out individual cherries to you, each of them pitted already so there’s nothing to spit. It’s not like your stomach stops hurting, but you don’t start feeling queasy, so you endure Asriel passing you slices of zucchini and then chunks of banana bread with nuts inside and then bite-sized bits of fried chicken. You eat the last, a chocolate candy, directly from his fingers; he smiles down at you and brushes your hair out of your face. You allow him to do this, and while you lay still and squint up at the sky and taste chocolate melting on your tongue, you reach out and hold his hand.

The sky is perfect blue, strewn with hazy clouds like fraying cotton, drifting slowly. You’ve watched them move for longer than you can bother to keep track of, slowly acclimating to the coldness of the water on your feet, your pill dissolving under your tongue until it vanishes.

“I don’t know how I’m going to deal with work tonight,” you say.

“Do you have any paid leave days left this month?”

“Two. I _only_ get two a month, they don’t roll over.”

“What if you just… tell them you can’t make it to work tonight?” he says gently.

You make a face. “I should probably eat dinner, Asriel. The free food and the tips are the only reasons I still work there.”

“I can take care of dinner for today,” he says. “If you have to start job hunting tomorrow, you should probably rest up as much as you can beforehand. It’ll be stressful.”

“Your parents…”

“They’re not going to care,” Asriel says. He hesitates just a moment and adds, “I doubt they’re even going to _notice,_ honestly.”

The note of bitterness would make you very nervous without the tone of sadness and resignation that accompany it. As if he can sense what you’re thinking, he squeezes your hand so that you’ll look at him. “If it _does_ turn into a problem I’ll take responsibility and make sure you don’t have to deal with any of the fallout. But I don’t think it will be one.”

“Very dashing,” you say. “You make it sound as though you’ve knocked me up and now you’re going to propose to me.”

He laughs a little at this.

“If I’m going to call off work I’ll need to go back to the apartment once to shave and change, seeing as Judith the waitress as they know her usually wears girlier clothes than this and doesn’t have any five o’clock shadow.” But you don’t sit up.

“I’ll walk you there, if you want.”

“Don’t you have classes that you’re supposed to be in or something?”

Asriel laughs, showing pointy teeth. “I did those in the morning. There’s work that I _could_ be doing right now if I wanted to, but I think that being there for my best friend who’s having a rough day is more important.”

You blush riotously and Asriel ignores it with grace.

It’s good, though, to have him offer to come with you. If left to your own devices you would probably either try to force yourself to work anyway, or announce you’re taking the day off and then lie in bed stressing all night, starving yourself to save money. Asriel coming along will prevent you from succumbing to the temptation to hurt yourself out of your own sense of obligation.

 

 

 _Five o’ clock shadow_ was a bit of an exaggeration on your part; your facial hair is significantly thinner and grows a lot slower since you started E. The stubble is still scratchy, though, and your hair is dark enough that it sticks out on your face when you don’t shave. You go over your cheeks, chin, and throat carefully before you change into a sleeveless dress and replace your belt and knife.

Sallie does not appear to be surprised to see you begging off tonight’s shift: “Poor Judith. I’ll see if I can convince our regulars to behave better by the time you come back tomorrow.”

“Hope you don’t get sick before the end of the month,” Keesha says dryly, and you make a face in agreement; you’ve been thinking the same thing.

You asked Asriel to wait for you by the statue again, because you don’t need people from your workplace getting curious about you going off to meet him and gossiping. You keep your head down all the way. There are a lot of dark-haired, olive-skinned humans in Spiral City. As long as you don’t go out of your way to draw attention to yourself, you can stay relatively anonymous, and your various work identities remain easy to keep separate.

The trip to the castle is still not a particularly fun one, even with forewarning. The guards and townspeople don’t seem to care about your presence any more than they did initially, but that does not stop you even a little from expecting someone to recognize you from your undignified visit years ago or for the queen herself to pop out of a corner and order you off the premises.

But you reach the garden again without any of your catastrophizing coming to fruition. It’s with relief that you sit back down under the same tree, remove your boots, and put your feet back into the water, making sure to rearrange the skirts of your dress so that they won’t get wet too. The sweat on your back is cold and your heart is still going so rapidly and vigorously that you’re distantly worried it might just rupture.

Asriel does not sit beside you. He’s fished a watch from his pocket and is holding it open in his palm, frowning.

“Please don’t tell me that there’s some class that you _do_ have to go to after all this,” you warn him.

“There isn’t,” he says, and closes the watch. He stuffs it back into his pocket before continuing, turning to look you in the face. “I didn’t notice how late it was getting, though. I have to go inside and make sure Dad eats something.” He turns his muzzle to the side a little, eyes uncertain. “You can come if you want, but—”

You’re already shaking your head vigorously.

Asriel smiles. “Yeah, I kinda figured.” A pause. “Would you feel all right waiting here on your own, or would you rather have someone with you?”

You like neither of these choices, but you have to assume that if Asriel doesn’t go to meet his father on time the consequences for you will be more severe. “Which is least likely to get me ejected from the premises? I will tolerate someone else’s company as long as that someone is not liable to toss me out on my ear, I think. I don’t see any particular secure hiding places here, and I want to relax in your company instead of having to play hide and seek all night.”

Asriel rises on tiptoe and cranes his neck. You look over your shoulder to follow his gaze; he’s looking at one of those outdoor hallways you don’t know the proper name of at a monster in light armor, probably a guard. “HEY UNDYNE! ARE YOU BUSY RIGHT NOW?” he yells.

The monster named Undyne stops. You can’t see them well in the shadow, but they appear to be humanoid and have the sort of gigantic fluffy ponytail that you wanted when you were little, the kind of hairdo that must fly proud as a banner in any wind. “NO????? WHY??????” they yell back.

“CAN YOU COME HANG OUT WITH MY FRIEND FOR A MINUTE WHILE I GO TAKE CARE OF DAD?” Asriel calls.

“SURE, I GUESS?????????”

“You’ll be okay with Undyne,” Asriel tells you as the Undyne in question steps out into the light. “She’s a little rough around the edges but she’s very kind. She won’t throw you out of the castle now that I’ve told her we’re friends.”

The hair is the most shocking shade of red you’ve ever seen on a living creature. It’s pulled back very severely from a heart-shaped face with a slightly blunt chin. That face is blue and framed by broad delicate fins; there’s a black patch over the left eye. No real nose to speak of, but the brows are strong and the eye that _is_ present and accounted for is black and vertical, set in light yellow sclera. The mouth is thinner than yours with black lips and slightly yellowed fangs protruding. She’s wearing a metal breastplate and her gauntlets and greaves have got metal in them, but the rest of her armor is leather, not like the gate guards who were in full mail.

She’s thin with ropy muscles, and—you note as she gets closer and you have to tilt your head back further—very tall, half a foot taller than Asriel or more. She lanks and gangles and her step is exuberant in a way that seems like confidence and impatience rolled into one, shades of someone young and cocky and ready to prove their skill. In a human this would make you a little wary; for a monster, you’ll be more generous in your judgments.

“Chara, this is Undyne,” Asriel says, gesturing towards her. “She’s Captain of the Royal Guard. Undyne, this is my friend Chara. They’re worried about someone thinking they don’t belong here if I leave them by themself, so could you keep them company?”

“Yeah, sure,” Undyne says. “I won’t let anybody chase ‘em off.”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can, I promise,” Asriel tells you. “And I’ll have dinner with me when I do.”

You nod. He smiles a little at you, then turns and starts jogging back the way you came, presumably headed for the main entrance or something. He has grass stains on his rear end after all.

Undyne spends roughly half a minute regarding you with raised eyebrows and then sits, crossing her legs at the ankles. Your heart is still trying to leap out of the side of your throat, but you relax a little now that she’s not looming over you. The way she’s grinning at you makes you suspect she did this purposefully—monster kindness. You curl your toes in the water and rub at your chest.

“How many kids’ clapping games d’you know?” she says, apropos of absolutely nothing.

You turn to stare at her. She shrugs, the stiff leather covering her shoulders creaking. “It’s just you look like my girlfriend does when she’s so freaked out she’s two seconds from imploding, and she does better with like… _doing_ stuff when that happens ‘cause it gives her brain something else to chew on. You wanna try that? Or if there’s something else you usually do that I could help with?”

“I, ah,” you say, and take a deep breath. “I know ‘Miss Mary Mack’ and I think I still remember parts of ‘Susie Had A Steamboat’.”

“Cool,” says Undyne. “I know both of those and I can teach you other ones too. Miss Mary Mack’s easier, want to start with that?”

“All right,” you say. You twist to face her properly while still leaving your feet in the water, and she scoots a little nearer.

Undyne has you start slow and gradually increase your pace as you struggle to remind yourself how the patterns go. Your ability to sing has been iffy since your voice changed, but Undyne—who has a lovely voice even while singing stupid kids’ rhymes—doesn’t comment, she just lets you try stuff over when you fuck up and fills in lyrics when you forget them.

Once you’ve recovered your Miss Mary Mack skills and learned the bits of Susie Had A Steamboat that you either forgot or never knew, Undyne teaches you some monster clapping games, a few kids’ rhymes and a few that are _entirely_ too bawdy to be for kids. The one about tentacles in particular is too ridiculous for you to get through with a straight face, and after your third failed attempt you just set your hands in your lap and giggle.

Undyne, grinning fin to fin, peels her gloves off to reveal clawed blue hands with the tiniest bit of webbing in between the joints of her fingers. “That’s _much_ better. I’m not exactly the best job at judging humans ‘cause we don’t have that many in the castle, but I think you look less likely to fall on your face or whatever.”

You wince. “Thank you, I think.” You stretch your toes in the water, worrying the thought before you try to put words to it: “Is Asriel… is he really not going to get in trouble for having brought me here?”

“Nah, not for _you_ at least,” Undyne says. “Usually humans have to get vetted by the Queen and the Guard before they’re allowed this far into the castle, but you’re Asriel’s friend. We’re _reasonably_ sure you’re not gonna cause trouble given that, and if you were you’d have to deal with me.” She grins very large here. “His mom might, like, tell him off a little if she knew? But that’s about it, he’d get off with a slap to the wrist, and the Queen would be fair to you. It’s her job.”

The way that Undyne phrases all of this makes you very worried about how widespread the story of your previous visit is. You think you would probably wilt if you tried to ask, so you shift the topic a bit, twisting strands of grass between your fingertips. “Asriel keeps assuring me that he doesn’t get in trouble for always sneaking out of the castle, but… does he really? Wouldn’t even Her Majesty get angry with him for all his delinquency?”

“Asriel pretty much does what he wants,” Undyne says. “I dunno if the Royal Spymaster has even bothered telling Toriel about him getting up and walking out so often. She’s pretty busy doing two people’s jobs every day. I know it’s been ten years,” she says quickly as if to forestall argument, “but that kinda workload just… it’s not meant for one person.”

Asriel said that he had to make sure that his father ate something, you remember, and you release the grass to wind both hands into your skirts. He told you a little when you were younger and he needed a shoulder, but lately he hasn’t said much in detail. Under the circumstances, everything you imagine to fill in the blanks seems grim. “And his tutors…”

“One time he tried to pull rank on his algebra teacher, and that _did_ get back to his mom, and boy did she let him have it then! I swear he didn’t stop blushing for a _whole fuckin’ week.”_ Undyne slaps her knee in merriment over the memories of this episode, then sobers. “Basically he gets his work done so they don’t have anything to complain about, but otherwise he gets to run wild. As long as he stays safe and healthy, and he doesn’t go anywhere _too_ dangerous in town, people just… let him do his thing. He’s eighteen now, after all.”

You think about Asriel wandering the grand halls you only saw the once, when you were miserable with sickness and poison and half delirious to boot. It causes a sudden sharp tug behind your heart. The one thing that can be said for the terrible farce that is your life is that you’re usually too busy running around from one bleed-you-dry job to the next to be lonely.

“He seems happier when he gets to go see you, though,” Undyne goes on, nonchalant. “So hey, there’s that.”

It’s probably impossible to hide the fact that your cheeks are burning, but you avert your gaze anyway. “This is starting to get depressing. Can we talk about something else? You mentioned a girlfriend. Tell me about her.”

“Hell yeah I’ll tell you about her! Alphys is the smartest monster in the court, maybe even smarter than the Royal Spymaster—she’s the Royal Scientist and she designs _so much cool practical shit_ for the whole city and also she’s FREAKING CUTE—”

Now _this_ is a topic that will last you until Asriel gets back, you can tell. Undyne has obvious pride in her girlfriend, and regales you with anecdote after anecdote about Alphys’ cuteness, her passion for literature, and her genius. You apparently have Alphys to thank for the purifiers in the fountains and communal showers; she’s also revolutionized indoor plumbing and the heating systems used in the castle itself and in Castle Town homes everywhere. She likes to tinker too, and is apparently the one who made Asriel’s watch—from scratch.

Undyne describes her as a lizard monster “about yay high” (gesturing somewhere around five feet) with glasses who is “absolutely the fucking squishiest, like, pillow squishy, _marshmallow_ squishy” and stutters sometimes. Alphys is apparently about the same age as Undyne, so she’s probably in her late twenties or early thirties.

“If you keep coming around here, you might even get to meet her sometime,” Undyne says with a very wide grin. “I bet you’d get along.”

You smile and say something polite and meaningless. Maybe one day, if you’re ever able to move into one of the nice clean buildings nestled in the coil of the spiraled wall at the castle’s foot, you will be on visiting terms; until then you highly doubt that you’ll be back here again.

You’re spared from having to make more niceties or search for some new topic of conversation that isn’t riddled with potential awkwardness by Asriel’s return. He has the basket over his arm again and has changed his grass-stained breeches for a long pleated skirt in pristine black fabric lovely as midnight water. Undyne scoots over some and Asriel plunks down between you, setting the basket down at your center.

“Sorry that took so long, Dad was actually pretty chatty today,” he says, smiling at you. He seems winded, his chest rising and falling more dramatically than usual. “He’s not usually this well, so I would’ve felt bad to just ditch him right away—but I’ve brought food, so here, let me feed you.”

Asriel has brought you a little cup of pasta, peas, and carrots in cream sauce; soft brown bread baked with dates and raisins and cinnamon; slices of what you believe is probably duck or turkey; a baked sweet potato and two baked apples.

You eat slowly—there’s a lot and you still aren’t feeling as great as you’d like to be, but you want to eat as much of it as you can, since Asriel’s the only one who feeds you this much at once. You _think_ you’d still be able to survive if he ever stopped bringing you lunch every day, but it would be a very miserable adjustment period.

The line you’re toeing is vague and indefinite and it puts you in a veritable thunderhead of a mood. So you just eat quietly, careful as you can be not to get anything on your clothes. Your back starts to hurt from sitting all this time and maybe a little from exhaustion, and Asriel is there and solid, so you lean a little on his upper arm. He shifts towards you to be an easier seat.

“You don’t have to eat all of that right now,” he says graciously. “You can save any leftovers to eat later tonight or tomorrow. Monster food doesn’t really rot like human food does, after all.”

“You’re not going to bother to feed Undyne?” you ask after swallowing a mouthful of Probably Duck.

“Undyne can feed herself just fine,” the guard says, slouching backwards. “You said Asgore’s doing well today?”

“Yeah. I mean—you know how he usually is, but he wasn’t just up and about, he was more… _here,_ more grounded. We talked about my lessons and things, he gave me some tips for elocution class and he even talked to me about some of my philosophy assignments.” Asriel is smiling. “I think this is the best day he’s had in a while. I wish Mom could’ve been home with us too, and we could’ve had dinner together. It’s been a long time and maybe it would’ve been kinda awkward but I miss family dinners.”

“Yeah?” says Undyne. “Maybe I should go visit him sometime, then. I miss the ol’ big fuzzy pushover.”

Asriel shrugs with the shoulder you’re not leaning against. His mouth crimps at the corners against helplessness or bitterness, you’re not sure which. “I wouldn’t… I dunno, get your hopes up too much—he’s still not, y’know, he’s not _well._ But I think he’d appreciate the company if you did come to see him, especially since people usually just… leave him to do his own thing.”

Undyne makes a low humming noise deep in her throat. You keep silent. Family dinners for you were horror plain and simple, were trials that ended when your father was bored and not until. There is nothing there for you to miss. Your father is not worth mourning. Asriel’s pain is alien, throned in thorns so high and distant that you could never hope to reach it. You could only hope to sully it if you tried.

The sky is starting to turn colors by the time you’ve finished eating; you can watch it unhindered by the silhouettes of buildings and stalls, clotheslines, the detritus of so many people living so packed in. If you glance around you can see a few small soft lights that have been turned on behind castle windows, glowing against the castle walls from around the bend. They don’t detract too much from the lovely pink and violet slide of the sunset, the moon brightening and the first stars and planets starting to wink down upon you.

 Conversation between the prince and his captain has lapsed, you realize; you lean your head further back against his shoulder to look at him. He’s glancing sidelong at you, worrying his long skirt between his claws.

“Ree, what is it?” you ask.

He frowns and looks helplessly at Undyne (who shrugs) before turning his muzzle back towards you. “Chara, I…” And here he hesitates. “I know you might think I’m overreaching, but I really just don’t… want you spending the night in your apartment, under the circumstances. You’ve had a hard day, you’re upset, and then there’s all the public unrest and you having to be afraid of your neighbors because I was careless yesterday. I just—I want you to stay somewhere safe, and get a good night’s sleep, and I want to be able to help you if you need it tonight.”

His tone gets more uncertain and pleading as he goes on: He must feel the way your spine has gone rigid.

You take a very deep breath. Today has been so fucking long; you don’t need _for fuck’s sake how many times have we argued about this sort of thing_ and _he’s just worried and he’s obviously upset for his own reasons too, be nice!!_ getting into an armed bar brawl behind your skull. Ancient irritation picks up a stool and chucks it at your fondness for your best friend; in response, your fondness pulls a knife. You let the deep breath out.

“Asriel, I understand that you’re trying to help,” you try to say gently—it just comes out strained with forced calm, and you turn away so you won’t have to look at Asriel squirming; “and I have thus far allowed you to bully me into letting you fuss and keep me in your pocket all afternoon. But a great deal of my acceptance has hinged on the constant assurance I have gotten from you, and Undyne kindly verifying, that your mother will not take personal umbrage to my presence and throw me out on my ear, and in fact will probably never notice that I was here today because she has better to do.

“And believe me, it would be _very_ nice to enjoy an evening of functional plumbing and no worry of bigots attempting to break my door down, but your mother WILL notice and may have strong objections to you attempting to house the _diseased whore_ in your bedroom tonight.”

Your face is burning; your mouth has stretched into a tense false smile. To his credit, Asriel doesn’t protest that you have a clean bill of health _now_ and haven’t done any sex work in over a year, or any other inane semantic nitpicks like that.

“What if you had someplace to sleep that _wasn’t_ Asriel’s bedroom, though?” Undyne pipes up. You and Asriel both turn, you jumping a little; your blush is spreading—you’d nearly forgotten she was sitting there too.

“Tell us what you have in mind,” Asriel says. “I was just gonna have them stay in my room because it’s huge anyway, but it’d be unbecoming to try to force them into it if they don’t feel safe there.”

You hate the way he phrased that a little, like he thinks you think of _him_ as the real threat; you hate it especially because he’s not altogether wrong. If his patience and his tenderness have a limit you don’t want to find it, and you especially don’t want to be completely vulnerable when you find it.

“There’s rooms open in the castle staff wing,” says Undyne, holding up one clawed finger. “It’s close enough to my quarters that you can come right down the hall and get me if you need anything, Chara, and I have the rank to go grab Asriel if you need him specifically. I even have stuff for tea in my room!!! So I can make you ginger tea or rooibos if you can’t sleep!!!!!”

“Chara?” Asriel says, swiveling around to face you, all hesitant and hopeful.

This time it’s your kneejerk instinct to decline any and all charity and having been reminded that Asriel has his own damage that have a quick and dirty knife duel in the back of your mind. The latter kicks the former in the nuts when its guard is down, and you try a smile and shrug. “I suppose that would be workable.”

Undyne grins wide, pleased as punch that she’s come up with the winning solution, but it’s the way Asriel relaxes with his whole body, gently sagging in his own frame, that makes you feel like a travesty of a decent person for thinking of refusing.

“Good,” he says, and smiles, going all wet-eyed and tremulous: “Good. We’ll get you all taken care of, just you see.”

 

 

The benefits of a warm shower, soft fancy crushed-flower soap, and even fancier shampoo immediately quash any remaining doubts as to the wisdom of your choice. You stand under the spray for at least half an hour lathering yourself up and rinsing, scouring away every last little vestige of dirt or stale sweat that might be hiding in the crinkled skin of your elbows or behind your knees, under your breasts, between your balls and your dick, in the crevices of your cuticles. Once you finally step out and dry off you smell strongly of lavender, vanilla, and cotton flower; better, you _feel_ pristine, untouched, floating and ebullient.

Asriel fished a diaphanous nightgown out of who knows where for you, while Undyne has absconded with your clothes—she has promised to wash them and then return them in the morning. The nightgown is absolutely the finest thing you’ve ever worn, made of white lawn and chiffon, hemmed in ruffly lace and with delicate little beads like chips of crystal woven in the Dreemurr family crest over your heart. There are opalescent little buttons from the collar to under the bust, and it _billows;_ you can’t help but give a little twirl for the sheer joy of it. You want white and pale pink hair ribbons, silvery diamond-encrusted hairpins, long dangling earrings to match. You’ve never worn anything so _pretty_ before. You know you couldn’t possibly care for it, you’d destroy it against your washboard with your terrible too-harsh soap, but you still want to take it for yourself when you leave.

You force yourself to stop twirling before you make yourself dizzy enough to collapse. The long skirts of the nightgown drift briefly around your legs before settling against your skin in a whisper, giving you goosebumps. Your breasts sway into your upper arm with inertia; the gentle thump of your soft dick against your upper thigh is that sensation’s less dignified cousin. Barefoot you dance your way from the small servant’s quarters’ small bathroom into the main room, bringing a veil of steam with you; you could be walking on clouds.

Asriel waits for you at what you suppose is the standard-issue desk with a teacup and a plate of what looks like a tiny chocolate cake. When he sees you his eyes go round, and you laugh.

“Don’t I just clean up nicely?”

“Well, golly, you sure do,” he says, grinning a little.

Your late-night snack is chocolate cheesecake, according to Asriel—finally, a kind of cheese that you can get along with. At first you were disappointed to see that it was so small, but it’s so rich that you find yourself barely able to finish it. The tea is, Asriel says, from Undyne—lemon ginger with a drop of honey, no caffeine. You burn your tongue on it just a little, but it’s warm and delicious on your throat and clears your head.

The bed here is a proper double, complete with luxurious linen sheets and a light cottony comforter, plus a wealth of pillows that you could just sink into like a nest. It doesn’t have a canopy, but it does have tall posts and wooden head- and footboards made of some fine warm-colored wood you can’t appraise accurately in the low light of the desk lamp. You curl up atop it; Asriel sits next to you.

“Just—to make this clear,” you say, halting, fighting the sudden sense of cramped cold around your heart as you become aware that these nightclothes are extremely translucent, “I don’t think I am up to having sex tonight. Nor do I think it would be advisable even if I were.”

This is a populated hallway—what if someone hears or sees, what if there’s a fuss made about it, what if you’re sent away, what if you lose the right to move to the castle town. What if someone takes Asriel away from you—decent coworkers are one thing, and Undyne seems nice, but Asriel is the only person in the world who really knows you. Aside from Undyne and anyone he spoke to while you were sick and he brought you here at both your wits’ end, he’s the only person who so much as knows your real name.

But Asriel just nods to you. “Oh, yeah, that’s totally reasonable. I just thought, since it’s a new place, if you had trouble sleeping… I could sit with you for a while. I’ll go back to my room when you’re asleep so neither of us will get in trouble, I promise, but…”

His fidgets tell you that he is perhaps not being entirely honest about his motives, but he’s right, it’s better to have the company than to be left alone in your own head. You smile a little and extract one arm from under the bedclothes to pat the mattress beside you.

Asriel’s face lights up, and he stretches out on his side next to you, on top of the covers instead of beneath them. He wraps his arm over your side, and you press your back up against his front, facing the wide glass window and its lovely view of the night sky. It’s been a very long time since you could properly spoon, your bed being much too small; Asriel’s steady heartbeat against your shoulderblade is a much-missed comfort.

“I’m sorry for being so weird and pushy today,” he says in a low voice, giving you a very gentle squeeze.

“You did more good than you did harm,” you tell him, wriggling your arm out from beneath the bed to cover the back of his big meaty paw-hand with your own palm. “I appreciate that you wanted to help. You _did_ help. You _are_ helping. Thank you. I wouldn’t have managed as well without you, today.”

He noses your shoulder, gentle. “It’s gonna be okay, Chara. I swear to you, we will find a way to make sure this turns out okay.”

It’s difficult to tell how much of this optimism is princely naïveté, how much you can really trust. It would be nice if he’s right, you know. But you don’t want to talk about this now, any more than he wants to share his feelings about his encounters, or lack thereof, with his parents.

“How many constellations can you see from here?” you ask instead, shifting on the pillow to jerk your chin towards the window.

“Oh! Hmm.” Asriel goes quiet. “More with a telescope, I think, ‘cause the light from the city sort of blocks them out, you know. But I can point out some. And hey, no fair with the springing a test on me all of a sudden.”

You chuckle a little. “I would hardly call this a _test._ Shall we see how many we can pick out, then?”

“Okay. And if we run out of ones we can see we can just make up our own.”

It’s a comfortable old way to pass the time. You’ve named a number of existing constellations, and each imagined a few silly ones, when you can start to feel yourself getting drowsy, lulled by your best friend’s warmth and your cleanliness and the simple worldly paradise of a good bed.


	3. far enough by daylight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bonus warnings for this chapter include unintentional misgendering, accidental outing, and panic attacks.

You wake with the pretty nightgown tangled around your legs and your hair in your mouth, alone. Only white fur caught in the sheets proves that Asriel really was here with you last night.

It is an immense relief that he was as good as his word and snuck back out so that he wouldn’t get in any trouble for being with you. But at the same time, it makes you fidgety somehow that he did as he was told. Instead of lying there blinking stupidly and wondering why that is, you get up. Tonight you’ll be going back to your own shitty lodgings, so you may as well take advantage of such lavish resources as a functional shower and nice soap while you can. In a castle with so many monsters, surely no one is going to blink at you for bathing twice as long as you don’t use any of the toiletries up.

And besides, you’re going to have to spend today job hunting—especially since Asriel convinced you to rest yesterday. It will not hurt your chances of getting hired to look as clean as possible.

That is, however, going to require your having clothes to change into. Undyne never said when or how she planned to get them back to you after washing them—god, you hope that you’re not going to have to chase her down in see-through loungewear when you don’t even know your way around the castle. You tiptoe over to the door of your loaned room and open it, with a mind to poke your head out and peek around; you feel it bump into something immediately.

Your dress from last night is lying folded in a shallow basket. You bend to pick it up, basket and all, and retreat back into the room. A cursory sniff tells you that it smells almost as nice as last night’s soap.

Once you’re washed and dressed and cleanly shaven, hair as dry as you can get it from just the towels, you try to make the bed and fold up your borrowed nightgown. It’s hard to really get it neat by yourself with a bed this large, so it’s nowhere near as crisp as the room was when you arrived the previous night, but this will have to be good enough.

A little less slowly than before, you push the door open, one hand still on its knob; you lean your upper body out, setting one foot up against the door itself.

Some of the other doors along the hallway are open, too; a few monsters in uniforms like Undyne’s or what you think the castle staff uniform must be are walking up and down the length of the corridor, on their way to somewhere else. Some of these monsters take brief glances towards you, but nobody seems to question your presence enough to come bother you or even give you a second look.

Undyne herself is standing at the end of the hall, already in uniform. She’s got her hands on her hips and appears to be talking to—no, _scolding_ another monster in the same light-armor version of the guards’ uniform, but with the sleeves ripped off to show the kind of muscles that (there’s a twinge of pain near your heart) senior dockworkers tend to have. This monster is between her and the wall and has both hands jammed into their pants pockets, not facing Undyne fully. Their long hair falls into their face, and their shoulders are tense.

The prospect of searching the whole castle for Asriel and maybe getting caught by someone who would not want a human here—or even, god forbid, the queen herself—narrows its eyes and pulls a knife on your anxieties about interrupting a confrontation like this. Undyne… seems to like you, and yesterday she showed a lot of care for your circumstances. She is significantly less intimidating than Asriel’s mother.

You _could_ just wait here and hope Asriel will show up on his own eventually, but that’s not going to get you a new day job. You take a deep breath, square your shoulders, and step out into the hall. Still, no monsters accost you. Though your steps are hesitant, you find yourself drawing nearer and nearer to Undyne and the other monster.

Now that you’re closer… the other guard (?) is actually taller than Undyne is, but something about their posture makes you feel like they must be… younger, maybe even about your age or Asriel’s. It’s the tension and defensiveness to their expression, that space between wary and defiant and cowed that makes this situation feel like a student getting dressed down by their teacher.

…Or a hapless employee getting chewed out by their boss.

You stop about twice arm’s length away from Undyne and clasp your hands at your waist, then clear your throat gently. “Undyne?”

“—and don’t even get me _started_ on the chalk,” Undyne says, then falls silent and seems to register that you called her: Her aspect changes, her stance relaxes as she turns toward you. (Next time you resolve not to approach on her blind side—you’re sure you would hate that, and you ought to have thought of that.) “Oh, shit, Chara! Sorry I didn’t notice you were up. Did you need anything?”

“I wanted to thank you for yesterday, and I should probably say something to Asriel before I go back to job hunting,” you tell her, half smiling. “I just don’t know that it would be a very good idea for me to roam around the castle unescorted.”

“Ah, yeah, he said to go get him when you woke up, too,” Undyne says, grinning. “Don’t worry, we’ve gotcha.”

“Can I, like… go now,” the junior guard mumbles, giving you a peek at their truly impressive mouthful of pointy teeth.

Undyne scratches her head and sighs. “I _guess_ so. I mean, this is definitely nowhere near as bad as that time you decided to body tackle those wine barrels… Just stay out of trouble for the rest of today at least, will ya, punk?!”

The monster shrugs their shoulders and slouches off. Through the curtain of their hair you think you see them casting a glance back at you that makes you wonder just how transparent your impulse to step in and rescue them was.

Undyne waits for them to disappear around the corner before pulling a face at you and jerking a thumb over her shoulder in the direction they disappeared. “Sorry about that. Suzy can be kind of a handful.”

That comment about the wine barrels sounds like there’s probably a _very_ good story behind it, but you get the distinct feeling that it would only be funny to someone who wasn’t there. And you’re a little afraid to know what was going on with the chalk. “It must be difficult to look after everyone, being Captain.”

Undyne lolls her head backward a little and rolls her eye exaggeratedly. “God, you have _no idea._ She could make a great Guard someday if I could just get her to stop making a _complete jackass of herself_ and take the work seriously! But she doesn’t seem to wanna listen to ANYBODY.” Here she huffs out a sigh. “But I probably shouldn’t be whining to you like this when you’ve got your own stuff going on, yeah? C’mon, let’s go find His Highness and get you taken care of.”

You follow along at her shoulder as she turns and strides confident as anything down the corridor. Both your steps clop on the long embroidered carpets and ring out when you cross the tiles. The sconces here too deep into the castle for outside light hold magical flame in colors that set harmonizing tones with the walls, pale gold or rich orange to draw out the bits of gold. Overhead there are occasional chandeliers that shower you in tiny little rainbows when you step beneath them. The library has a few very old storybooks and illuminated manuscripts that are chained to the shelves with illustrations that looked like these halls. Maybe it’s just because of how muddled and awful your last visit here was, but you find yourself awed all over again that those drawings weren’t exaggerations.

Undyne leads up you up a short flight of stairs and into a hall with one wall of windows in golden stained glass patterned with the Dreemurr coat of arms. The ceiling here is all windows too, clear glass so clean it makes you breathe in with wonder, showing you thick towers of puffy white cloud and small darts of blue in between them.

Freshly washed and laundered as you are, you can’t shake off the crawling sensation of shabbiness, and the bitterness beneath it. Last night, and right now—it’s a dream. You don’t belong in this world, in a building so grand. You need to _leave._

(It isn’t fair.)

“Chara?”

You look up from the frayed toes of your boots. Asriel, resplendent in pearl gray breeches and a forest green jacket with bronze and silver braid, is jogging towards the two of you from the other end of the hallway. He looks like an oil painting and your desire to rip the jacket off of him and leave him wet and disheveled and touchable is as much spite as it is intimacy. You wouldn’t do it really, but you weave your fingers together at your waist anyway.

“I was just coming to get you,” he says, smiling, brows pinched into a peak of worry in the middle of his forehead. “Thanks for bringing them, Undyne.”

She grins wide at the both of you. “Don’t sweat it. If you need anything else you just ask, all right? That goes for you too, Chara. Ask any guard to get me, and I’ll be there.”

You smile and bow your head to her—the offer is kind, if perhaps a bit unrealistic in practice. She grins even wider and jogs off, clanking just a little so that you can hear her distantly even once she’s out of sight.

Asriel holds out a hand to you, and you take it briefly, squeeze his fingers. He squeezes yours back and then loosens his grip; you let your palm rest against his soft squishy pad for a moment later before sliding it away.

“I’ve got breakfast waiting,” he says. “Come on and come eat and we can talk about today.”

For a while you are worried that he intends to bring you to his personal rooms after all, but no, he leads you around two turns and then down a longer flight of stairs into a quiet room near the kitchens, and a back table that looks not completely unlike the staff room at your night job, if significantly higher quality. There are two plates there heaped with pancakes that are topped in what looks like apple compote, thick with cinnamon, drizzled in butterscotch. You sit carefully at the shorter stack and pick up your fork to get started on them.

“Do you already know what places you’re going to be looking?” he asks.

You press your lips together and cut the pancakes into small squares. “A few places where I’ve worked before. Then I’ll start from the nicer districts and work my way down.” At least that way you can get your hopes well and truly dashed today, and lower your standards properly so that you can look again with bare minimum criteria.

Asriel pauses in between huge bites to swallow and look at you judgmentally. This is the problem with having known each other for so long—every now and then he manifests a horrifying sixth sense for when you’re keeping morbid commentary to yourself. “If it ever gets so bad that you think you might have to go back to the streets—”

“Then we’ll have to talk about compromises. Yes, I remember from yesterday.”

“Okay. I know you wouldn’t be happy if I just swept you up out of your apartment and installed you in a tower or something, but I’d at least like to get you somewhere safer and more stable since I _can.”_ He pushes his plate aside: Already empty. “But hopefully it won’t come to that. We can get started as soon as you’re done.”

_We?_ “Excuse me, what do you mean by _we?”_

Asriel looks at you all wounded and reproachful. “Before you get on my butt about _ooooooh noooooooo what will my tutors think,_ I already talked to them all about this. I said that I have a friend who needs my moral support and I’m taking the day off, maybe more than just today if needs be, because if I couldn’t be here for you I would be so distracted it wouldn’t mean anything to be in lessons _anyway._ If it’s just going to be the nice parts of town today instead of the dark and murky streets where you would need to fight off grungy humans who might come after my purse, my life, and my virtue, I don’t see what the issue is. _Plus_ this way I can buy you lunch. You need to get your pill from me anyways.”

There are so many things to be said about this—things like _I wish you wouldn’t keep deciding this shit without any input from me at all_ and _I do not NEED your “moral support” because it’s mostly just you enabling me to treat you like a goddamn sugar daddy_ and _it might be argued that you already surrendered your virtue four years ago and the issue is moot_ —that you can’t even decide what cutting remark to let loose. The last one is a little pettier and meaner than you’re really willing to say to Asriel even when he’s being his most obnoxious. The whole idea of virginity is stupid and you wish you could scrub your brain of years of listening to clients natter on about it.

“You really want to go out dressed like _that?”_ is what you say, gesturing at his fancy shirt with the end of your fork.

Asriel blinks at you, looks down at himself, and lifts his chin again to turn mystified brown eyes on you. “Well… sure. I mean, it’s not like it’s got the family crest on it, right? What’s the problem?”

You sigh. If he doesn’t understand the problem after nearly a decade of sneaking out of the palace to meet you, he never will. “Never mind.”

“Uh, okay,” he says, still wrinkling his brow at you. In response you just stick another mouthful of pancakes into your mouth and chew. (They’re good.) Maybe it will be better for him to tag along after all; annoyance at his obliviousness and his anxious overweening protectiveness will at least distract you from panicking.

And if that doesn’t suffice, then having someone friendly there to help talk you down will be a boon. You can feel your shoulders starting to slump as you sigh.

“If I can’t find anything today and I have to start combing the more dangerous parts of the city, you _really_ can’t come then, though,” you tell him. “I don’t think I could bear the responsibility for keeping you safe when I’m already so preoccupied with trying to make sure I won’t go bankrupt and then starve and die.”

“I guess that _is_ fair,” Asriel says, “but until then I am going to aggressively follow you around and treat you to meals so you’ll get to spend as little money as you possibly can, so _there.”_

“Curse you for being so helpful,” you say dryly, and he wrinkles his muzzle at you and laughs.

 

 

A steady breeze makes today’s city streets less disgustingly hot than yesterday’s, but you find yourself sweating as you traverse them all the same.

Where you’ve worked before—courier, delivery girl for the bakery, woodworker—you have Asriel stay outside; you don’t need to scare off your former bosses with the presence of an obvious noblemonster. Every time you leave, you find yourself wondering why you bothered. The courier’s office turned you away saying that they only hire men these days, what with the threat of riots against public safety; it would be _unchivalrous_ to put a delicate girl in such a position. The baker seems genuinely unhappy to turn you down—“Business has been terrible lately, Rachel, we’ve actually had to let people go”—and the woodworker grimaces in sympathy while shaking his head—“Ah, Hannah, this is so awkward, we just hired a new apprentice last week and we wouldn’t be able to take you on”—but the answer is still always no.

You allow Asriel to accompany you in when you ask after scribe’s positions. The first isn’t hiring; the second turns you away because they’re apparently too busy to teach you their in-house shorthand; the third is only looking for someone to cover notary work and shoos you out on the basis that everyone knows women have no head for numbers.

“I don’t believe that’s how it works,” Asriel tells their clerk, polite and dripping with disdain.

_“I_ didn’t ask for the opinion of an overdressed hairball,” says the clerk.

You look sidelong at Asriel thinking _I won’t stab him if you don’t set him on fire,_ but Asriel shows no signs of aggression, just shocked affront. You take him by the elbow and steer him outside with you.

“If they’re going to be like that then they clearly don’t deserve my labor anyway,” you say with a bravado that’s as much for your benefit as his.

You sit at the feet of the Peacemaker and the King for lunch, which Asriel treats you to as promised: Fresh fruit and beef sausages baked into lovely warm buns that are dusted with sesame seeds and rye. You still feel cold from the lack of success this morning but the legs of the statue against your back are hot and the food tastes good after all the running around, so you eat it steadily and accept your pill from Asriel with grace.

“What next?” Asriel asks. Uncharacteristically he’s still playing with his sausage, picking at the seeds instead of finishing it. “Have you already gone through all the places you’ve worked so far?”

“Not quite,” you tell him. “There’s the florist’s down the other side of the road, and the apothecary next to it—I may not have the skill to actually make medicines by myself but I _do_ know how to identify plants and having a devoted scribe is useful to any store or business with a lot of raw materials that need sorting or records that have to be kept. Aside from _that,_ I suppose all that I can do is look for any place that’s got a ‘now hiring’ sign, or make myself a nuisance at shops that I’m fairly sure will take my skillset.”

“There’s a _lot_ you can do,” Asriel says. His creased brow does not match his hopeful tone at all. “So _somebody’s_ sure to realize what an asset you can be.”

“That is certainly the hope. Are you going to eat that or not?”

He looks down at the bun in his hands. “D…o you want it? You need the food more.”

It’s not _so_ much food that you could upset your stomach with it, you think, and you’re hardly daunted by Asriel’s spit given how often you swap it for recreational purposes. “Only if you don’t intend to finish it,” you say, and hold out a hand. He puts the bun into it and you finish it off without tasting it much.

The sun is high in the sky, blue between the clouds. The light has begun to slant down through the gaps in a way that is frankly painful to face directly, so you give up looking upwards even shielding your eyes and stand up instead, dusting off your skirts. You adjust your collar to make sure the shape of your throat isn’t going to show and you hold out a hand to your best friend, who takes it and allows you to lever him upright.

“Hope that was enough rest for your lily-soft feet, your lordship,” you say with a humorless grin, “because it’s time to get back to hoofing it.”

“I think my lily-soft feet will probably survive,” Asriel tells you, narrowing his eyes just barely. “Let’s go get you a job, Char.”

 

 

The florist is just as you remember her, perhaps with a little more gray in her hair than before. She glances at you and Asriel over the shoulder of her current client, but waits until that client is headed out the door with a large basket of tulips before she gathers up her skirts and rushes over to you. _“Sarah?_ Is that really you? You’ve gotten so _tall!_ I almost didn’t recognize you for a moment!”

You endure having your cheeks squeezed patiently and smile at her. Madam Jasmine, as she calls herself when working the shop, is now about an inch or so shorter than you and you suspect that you would be taller if she were in flat feet instead of heels. “Thank you, ma’am. _You_ look like you’ve hardly aged a day.”

Jasmine chuckles and pats at your shoulders. “Are you here to recommend us to your friend?” she asks, looking pointedly at Asriel.

Very subtle. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind taking a look around. But I’m here to ask if you have any open positions, as I find myself with free time during weekdays.”

She frowns here and folds her arms. “I think we don’t quite have the leeway to keep you right now. It might be a different story if you were to come back next spring, though, you know that’s our busy season. But if you’re looking for something sooner, you might want to try the apothecary? I know they’ll be looking for extra help starting October, and since you’re familiar with plants from working here they would be glad to have you. I’d be happy to vouch for you too, if they want a reference.”

_Damn it._ That’s still months away. “I’ll keep that one in my back pocket if nothing else works out, I think. I appreciate that you would be willing to help if I go for it, though.”

“Is the job market _really_ that bad, these days?” Asriel asks suddenly. You both turn. He’s got his hands clasped behind his back as he examines rows of potted daisies. “I had no idea. I’m starting to feel a little foolish for that.”

“It might not be in _your_ half of the Spiral City,” says Jasmine. “Being as monsters look out for their own, and all that. But the weather has been bad around here and some of the traders have taken their business elsewhere because of the riots. The city guard won’t do anything about it because they still see it as an issue of the slums, but more than a few traders have lost stock to vandals or had customers scared off by the commotion, so they’re peeling off to find better places to sell. Good thing we have the scheduled river barges, or we would all be taking an even worse hit than we already have.”

“Hm,” says Asriel. Jasmine, who doesn’t know him well enough to know the way his mouth gets all pouty and his brow beetles when he’s offended, just sighs and returns to the register.

“But that’s enough of me complaining to customers,” she says. “Take your time looking.” She looks tired, and you feel for her a little despite that she’s turned you away flat as anyone else and the shitty things she’s insinuated about the monsters. She would usually have a few kids running around in the shop or at least in the back sorting stock, but you don’t hear anyone. If she’s let too many staff go and put a noose around her own throat trying to chase profits, the fall waiting for her is a harsh one, and you wouldn’t wish that fate on many people. If her luck is bad she might end up with her property gone and scraping by on her back, or with all her remaining belongings in suitcases as she walks away from the city to seek her fortune elsewhere.

To the best of your knowledge, she hasn’t ever been anywhere else, same as you.

Asriel buys a single yellow flower to be polite and Jasmine thanks him for his purchase, and the two of you leave the shop. Behind you the cowbell hung on the door clangs to announce your exit, muffled by the wood.

“You all right?” you ask him quietly, leaning into his arm just enough that it won’t be conspicuous to passersby.

“I guess. I mean, she was _rude,_ but I can live with that,” he says, shrugging on the other side. He pauses for a moment, trying to work the flower through his buttonhole with little luck; his claws appear to be working against him. You look at him and hold out your hand; he sighs and surrenders the flower to you, allowing you to tuck it into his shirt instead. “It’s just—it’s one thing to hear about these things from Mom or Gerson and another to actually… walk out into town and see it for yourself.”

You leave your hands on his chest for an extra moment. “Think you might want to apply yourself to class a bit more now?” you tease.

“Even if I did, I don’t know what I would be able to do about all this,” Asriel says, and in the frustrated tone of his voice you can hear the fullness of what _all this_ encompasses for him: This city, its fraying politics, the consequences on the economy. Years of bitterness that have never been fully resolved, though people try to plaster that over with platitudes.

“Nobody’s expecting you to save the world,” you tell him, quieter.

“I guess not, but maybe I wanted to help at least a _little,”_ he says, and sighs. “But I shouldn’t be making you comfort me about this when you’ve already got it so rough.”

“It’s not such a hardship,” you say, poking him in the side to make him laugh. “You aren’t my best friend for nothing.”

“If you say so.” Asriel lifts his chin and scrunches up his face, then relaxes. And then frowns in what you think looks like interest. “Hey, Chara…  have you ever worked at a tailor’s before?”

“I have not,” you say. “I trust this isn’t a non sequitur?”

He shakes his head and lifts his left hand to point over your shoulder. “It’s just, there’s a guy down the street who’s putting up a _Help Wanted_ sign in the window of one right now.”

You spin around so fast that you very nearly fall over sideways: Following Asriel’s arm you see a two-story building with a hand-painted sign that says TAILOR COHEN over its front door and the wide glass window beside it. Just as he said, there’s a human man standing there, fiddling with a sign hung on a cord.

You want to run down there, just _sprint,_ claw this chance out of the hands of anyone else who might be primed to snatch it away from you. But you take a deep breath to steel yourself and walk forward in swift but steady strides instead. It will not do to look that desperate, not here. Asriel follows after you about half a step behind you to your side, a flash of white fur and green frippery in your peripheral.

Once across the street you fold your hands politely at your waist and clear your throat to get the attention of the man, who looks up at you. He’s about an inch shorter than you, maybe, with skin that’s hovering between dark olive and light brown; he has curly black hair that’s shot through with gray and a curved nose, dark brown eyes and crow’s feet as deep as the lines beside his mouth. He’s wearing little round gold glasses on a chain and a yarmulke, and you can see his prayer shawl protruding from beneath his fine vest and the pouch on his belt that’s bulging with pens and tools.

“Yes, how may I help you?” says the tailor, polite but guarded as he gives you the same going-over you’ve given him. He won’t, you’re sure, mistake the shape of _your_ nose or the in-betweener’s olive of your skin.

“Excuse me,” you tell him, “but am I correct in my hope that you’re just putting that sign up instead of taking it down?”

The tailor looks at you for maybe half a breath and then laughs through his nose. “That was certainly fast. Yes, I am looking to hire, but I have only one position and it is a very demanding one. If you’re interested, then you should come inside, the both of you.”

“Oh—I’m just here for moral support,” Asriel says, holding up both hands. You smile a little; this is the first time today that anyone has really addressed his presence like this. Everyone else either ignored him or made some transparent and solicitous overture towards his purse.

“Come in anyway,” says the tailor. “It would be a disservice to let you stand outside by yourself flaunting your money like that. You _will_ be swarmed by persons seeking to relieve you of it and not all of them will necessarily be savory.”

“What do you mean, ‘flaunting’?” Asriel asks, dismayed, and you burst out laughing.

“I apologize for my friend,” you say. “I’ve tried to explain the concept of dressing down to him before but it just won’t sink in.”

“Perhaps I will be able to help with that, even if we cannot help each other in other ways,” the tailor says simply, shrugging. “It is a feature of my job. Now, come along inside.”

The store, once you and Asriel have ducked in, takes up about half the building, with the back rooms cordoned off and a staircase just visible through one of the short hallways. The furnishings and the walls are all warm golds and browns, the sections of carpeting dense and dark green. The light fixtures on the walls seem to be mostly electric, if still in the style of older gas lamps—perhaps the tailor merely had them changed out without fussing with their positioning. There’s a desk to one side with stacks of papers and designs, and mannequins lined up to be visible in the window with clothing in various stages of completion. Rolls and bolts of cloth are stacked up against the far wall, with closed boxes and bins on the floor near them. Another table has a tape measure and scissors and small containers of pins on it, sheaves of paper and stray pens, and a small slate with chalk.

Standing at that table in easy reach of the slate is a human about your age who looks up in obvious surprise to see the tailor back inside so soon. She has dark brown hair in a smooth and shiny bowl cut, dark eyes that it takes you a second to register are gray and not black, the golden olive skin of a far Easterner and a face as round as her figure: Full breasts, a soft belly, large hips and large thighs from what you can see. She’s wearing a fawn-brown shirt with dark red trim and a lighter red cord at her waist with leggings the same color as the trim.

The tailor gestures at the table, and the other human—surely not his child; his coworker or his apprentice?—sweeps the various implements to either side while he pulls up chairs for himself, for you, and for Asriel. The girl stays standing as the rest of you sit, but leans her hands on the table.

“I am Chaim Cohen, the owner of this establishment,” says the tailor. “This here is Hana Mun, my ward and my apprentice. You are?”

“Ruth,” you tell him smoothly. Asriel looks at you a little, and you resist the urge to kick him surreptitiously because after all he does know how long you’ve been saving this particular alias. You just wish he wouldn’t be so _obvious_ about it. “Thank you for giving me the opportunity of this interview.”

There’s a pause that’s _just_ long enough to be awkward before Asriel finally seems to realize why everyone is looking at him. “Oh. Oh! Uhh. I’m… Ralsei.”

Through a titanic force of effort, you do not react. “Ralsei”, _really._ Naturally it would be a poor idea for him to just come forward and announce himself as the prince, but bullshitting an anagram in a tone that _screams_ ‘I’m not used to using aliases and I just pulled this name out of my ass’ is just going to make your audience suspicious.

To their immense credit Chaim and Hana neither burst out laughing nor demand to know what Asriel’s name actually is for real this time though. Privately you commend them on their tact.

“Before you decide whether you would like to pursue this job further,” Chaim says, “I’d like to explain our situation. This is ordinarily a three-person shop that I run with two apprentices. We serve the middle class and the nobility—mostly human, occasionally monster—and between myself and two employees we’ve always been able to keep up with the work and make a living.

“This was _until_ my second apprentice and bookkeeper David, that _feckless little whelp,_ decided to elope with a pretty girl without a second damn thought as to what that would mean for the two of us.”

“Ah,” you say.

“Hana has the makings of a good tailor and has been training under me for years, but is mute and cannot write in English,” Chaim goes on. “This store would take a significant hit if we had to close temporarily every time I have to run an errand or visit the washroom to avoid leaving my ward alone with clients and no sure way to communicate. We’ve tried to make it work for three days and at my age this is just untenable. We need to hire extra help.

“However… it will be a demanding job. We work from eight or nine AM to sundown every day except for Saturdays, when we are closed for Shabbat; we work all gentile holidays but close the shop early for the High Holidays and major festivals, so that work will not impede the rituals. We have lunch breaks and such but it’s still easiest for any apprentice to lodge here so that we can get started on time. And David shared a room with Hana, so if you were to get this job the two of you would have to get along.” His sharp stare tells you that the burden would be put on you to not cause trouble for her.

“May I see the rooms where I would be staying?” you ask.

“Depending on the rest of this interview. I won’t ask you to commit before you’ve gotten a chance to look, though, don’t worry. Do you have any experience working as a tailor?”

“No,” you say. “I can sew a bit, enough to repair my own clothes, but I understand that that’s different.”

“Hmm.” Chaim leans back in his seat. “Then what skills do you have?”

You unclench your hands and spread them out on your thighs. “I can read and write English and Hebrew, and I’m confident in my skills at basic arithmetic. I have a good memory and can haggle. My previous day job was physical labor; I can lift and carry heavy things. I know the layout of this city well. I can handle a typewriter and I’ve done short jobs as a scribe before. I have basic cooking skills, and I know a decent amount of botany, a little about plants used for dyes.

“And I learn quickly. Anything that I don’t know, I can learn.”

Chaim turns beady eyes to Asriel. “Do you vouch for your friend, Sir Ralsei?”

Beside you Asriel startles mildly to be called by the ridiculous name he came up with himself. “Y—yes,” he says. “She’s—she’s very smart, one of the smartest people I know, and she’s resourceful.”

You’ve had to coach him on it before, so he doesn’t trip over the false set of pronouns, but he avoids your name, probably so that he won’t call you by your real one accidentally. You reward him with a little smile, and he brightens.

“Ruth,” Chaim says, “do you have family?”

He could be asking for any reason from wanting to know if he knows your people from temple to feeling out whether he’ll need to speak to your folks before installing you in his own house. “No. Both of my parents died when I was twelve. I’ve been keeping myself afloat since then—hence my varied work experience, sir.”

“Do you work any other jobs?”

“I have a late-night job as waitstaff at a restaurant, to help make room and board at my apartment.”

“If you want to work here you may not be able to continue that job, especially if the hours overlap. And this household does not work on Shabbat. That _will_ extend to you.”

So you’re probably right to assume that Chaim is Orthodox, and strict. “I didn’t work on Saturdays already anyway, so that part wouldn’t be a hardship. May I ask what the pay would be here, in addition to room and board?”

The figure that Chaim gives you is not bad—about as much as the dockworking job, all told. If you had to work for only that amount, you would already be banking more of it just on a basis of not having to appease your horrible landlady with rent. “That salary will increase if you manage to last more than a month or so,” he adds, and you raise your eyebrows.

“Then I can probably quit my night job too, if you require it.” _Please._ Anything to see the back of that place.

“You will be provided meals here too, but will be expected to cook and buy groceries from time to time in exchange.” And here, again, the sharp gaze: “Do you practice?”

“I keep kosher, but it’s difficult to celebrate most holidays by oneself,” you say, winding your fingers together in your lap. “My family circumstances were… difficult, so if my mother belonged to a congregation in this city I never knew which.”

“But she _was_ Jewish and raised you as such.” You nod. “Which denomination, if you are aware?”

“Conservative.”

Chaim sighs and rolls his eyes a bit, which would ruffle your feathers if Hana didn’t start to giggle silently at the same time, covering her smile with a hand. “I won’t _force_ you to accompany me to my own synagogue if you would feel unwelcome there, but I _had_ hoped that I would at last have company. I took Hana in from a Reform children’s sanctuary, you see. It can make debating Torah a hassle, coming from such different standpoints.”

You start to smile yourself, unable to help it. “I would think it might make things more interesting, to have more points of reference to consider.”

This makes him grin, lifting up a hand to wag a finger at you. “At least living by yourself hasn’t made you think any less like a Jew! Now, do you have any other questions?”

You consider this. “How does Hana generally communicate?” She and Chaim _must_ be able to talk somehow, given the way he talks about her, and she must understand English—she’s following along with the conversation well enough.

“Sign language is quickest, if you can pick it up, but Hana can read and write Hebrew so until then the two of you ought to be fine.”

That explains the slate, then. “It _is_ my second language, so please go easy on me if my vocabulary can’t compare to yours,” you say to her.

Hana smiles and waves one hand a little as if to indicate that she’s sure you’ll be fine. Then her expression slides to something more questioning. She makes to reach for the slate and then withdraws her hands closer to her body as if thinking. You, Asriel, and Chaim all watch her as she raises one hand to her mouth and wiggles lightly in place as if bouncing on one heel. After almost a minute of this she reaches out to tap Chaim on his shoulder and makes several quick motions with her hands, glancing over at you multiple times.

Once she’s finished, Chaim resettles himself in his seat and rests his arms on the table, fingers of one hand over the other. “My apprentice as a question for _you,”_ he says. “Are you saris hamah, or adam? Or are you androgynos?”

You gasp a little before you can stop yourself. Heat rushes into your face and you curl your toes in your boots. Your palms are slick as you unknit your fingers and wind them together again. “A—actually, I. I’m—I prefer tumtum.”

Chaim nods slowly, as if expecting this. Hana scoops up the slate and chalk and begins to write quickly, a series of light clacks. Done, she sets the chalk on the table and turns the slate around in her hands:

_I’m sorry to be so blunt. I only ask because I’m androgynos myself. I don’t think someone who isn’t would have noticed anything._

“Oh,” you say, and make a conscious effort to breathe.

Asriel frowns from the slate to you and leans in a little. “I… can’t read that, what does it say?”

“It says—it says Hana is intersex. You know I told you about the—the other genders in Judaism that the dominant human culture doesn’t recognize when I… when I first read about them.”

“Oh!” Asriel says. He tilts his head to the side. “Um, does that mean that I don’t have to call you ‘she’ while we’re here?”

Your stomach drops immediately, your heartbeat galloping again. You can’t tell if you feel cold or hot but your hearing feels tinny and you feel like you’re watching this conversation from a long ways away.

“We will refer to you as a woman in front of our gentile clients, if that is how you prefer to be seen by them,” Chaim says evenly, “but we can treat you neutrally in private, as I do with Hana.”

Hana, meanwhile, has picked up her—their slate and rubbed the letters away with a cloth, and is now scribbling on it quickly. _I’m so sorry for asking something so intrusive! I just got excited because I’ve never known anyone else like me in real life before._

You make an effort to take a deep breath. First you turn to Asriel, who is frowning to see you react with upset. “Ralsei,” you say pointedly, keeping your face and voice ruthlessly calm, “you’re usually very good about this, but I’d like to remind you that even if _you_ think it’s safe to act otherwise, please continue to use the pronouns I have indicated to you beforehand in front of humans until I have told you myself that it’s all right to refer to me as you would in private. You could have cost me this job opportunity and put us both in danger.”

His eyes go very round—apparently it’s finally sinking in that he just outed you. “Oh. God. Yeah, I’ll—I’ll be more careful next time. I’m sorry, that was really thoughtless of me.”

You inhale very slowly and exhale even more slowly. “Good.” This settled, you turn back to Chaim and Hana. “You’ve been considerably more careful with your apprentice’s preferred forms of address than my friend has been with mine, so yes, I would like to be called by neutral pronouns in private. And I do intend to present as a woman while working here.”

“All right,” says Chaim. There’s a long silence that itches, and you let everyone else marinate in the awkwardness as you try to sweat out your own adrenaline response with even breathing. “Are there any other questions you have?”

“I’d like to see my potential quarters now, if that’s all right?” you say delicately.

“Of course. Hana—you show them around.” Chaim turns to Asriel with a slightly flat smile. “I will take the opportunity to explain to Sir Ralsei here why his costume is broadcasting his deep pockets to everyone in the city until you’re back.”

Asriel grimaces but doesn’t protest, apparently accepting this as his punishment. Hana gathers up their slate and leads you to one of the waist-high gates that cordons off the back of the room, then up the stairs that you noted when you first arrived.

“I’m sorry about all that,” you tell them as you climb. “I… haven’t actually met any other humans like us before either. I can understand you getting hopeful, and I’m sorry this couldn’t have been more positive.”

They startle a little and stop with their feet on different steps, leaning against the wall to write on their slate. _Please don’t apologize. This isn’t your fault. I should have been more considerate._

You smile up at them. “Well, even so, I won’t hold it against you.”

They smile back and start climbing again.

You wait until you’ve both reached the top floor to ask, “How long have you been working with Chaim?”

_Nearly eight years now, I think,_ they write down for you. _He adopted me when I was pretty young, about nine or ten, since he wanted a successor but didn’t intend to marry. He’s a fair teacher and employer, and not a bad guardian either._ They wipe away the text after you’re done reading and open one of the doors, displaying for you their personal room.

It’s done up in the same warm colors as downstairs, though here the walls are papered over from about waist-high to the ceiling in pale green paper with a pattern of little peach-colored flowers on curly stems, and instead of carpeting there are a couple of fluffy rugs on the floor. There’s a bunk bed, a small bedside table with a lamp, and two desks with chairs, one on the other side of the table and one near a broad window with shutters that mostly shows the building next door, and slices of the street. There also appears to be a closet and a trunk.

The top bunk and nearer of the two desks appear to be Hana’s—the bed is rumpled like it was haphazardly made, and there are personal effects scattered across the desk: An open box of candied fruit, a very worn plush doll with one eye missing that _might_ have been a cat once and a sewing kit next to it, a couple of books. The trunk is theirs too, you think, judging by the fact that it has the edge of a sock shut in it.

The lower bunk’s covers are a desaturated olive green, and when you inch closer to touch them they appear to be fairly good-quality linen. The bed is not quite the size of a double but is still significantly larger than the twin-sized mattress at your apartment. Asriel might not be able to ride you sitting up without banging his head on the bunk frame, but a bed this size would give you both a _lot_ more room to stretch out during sex.

You clear your throat a little and turn to Hana. “Would Chaim… mind if I brought my friend here from time to time? He usually takes some time to come see me during my lunch breaks, but we could find another place to meet if that would be a bother here.”

Hana, listening to this with sparkling eyes and raised eyebrows, starts to smile even before you’re done. They prop their slate on their hip. _I don’t THINK it will be a problem, I don’t think Chaim is that much of a stick in the mud. I’m more than happy to make excuses for you if you want alone time, up here or sneaking out. David brought his girlfriend here sometimes but I don’t think even Chaim ever noticed, so as long as you’re not super loud you should be okay to bring your boyfriend up._

You cough a little to cover up your own awkward smile as Hana erases the chalk. “I don’t know that he’s my _boyfriend,_ exactly, it’s…” How _should_ you explain your relationship to them? You’ve already made it clear enough to Hana that you and Asriel are having sex, but the phrase _friends with benefits_ seems inadequate to explain your actual emotional closeness. “It’s a little complicated,” you settle for belatedly.

Hana nods, seeming to soak this up with the same wide-eyed intensity. Is this because _you’re_ new, because interspecies relationships are a novelty, or are they just curious about love and sex in general? You can’t even begin to guess yet. But they tilt their head slightly to the side and then smile with mischief and write, _His name isn’t REALLY “Ralsei”, is it?_

“It’s not,” you say stoically. “He’s very, _very_ bad at dressing down.”

Hana laughs at this. Their laughter isn’t _completely_ soundless, and the noise isn’t just from the sound of their breath—there’s a faint, withered sort of _hee hee hee_ coming from deep in their chest.

They show you also to the upstairs bathroom, which has a small toilet, a shower stall, and a low bathtub that appears to be more for sitting and soaking than washing. This room’s floor is tiled and there’s a drain at the center of it.

_The rest of the upstairs rooms are storage,_ Hana explains. _Chaim’s rooms, his bathroom, and his ritual bath are all downstairs, and so are the kitchen and his office._

“You could probably fit most of my apartment into your room alone,” you joke. “I don’t think you would have much trouble with me trying to take up too much space, at least.”

With that the two of you return downstairs, where Chaim has gotten out a small book with bolts of cloth in it and is explaining something to Asriel very earnestly. For his part, Asriel looks sheepish.

“Ah, welcome back,” Chaim says, closing the book. “What do you think?”

“Things look fine to me,” you tell him. “I wouldn’t mind living here at all, I think.”

“Then here is what I propose,” says Chaim. “I will hire you temporarily—you will move in and work here for a week, and at the end of that week we will reevaluate how things are going, whether we think you are a good fit for our business and you want to stay on with us.”

You consider this. It is an _extremely_ good job offer if you can manage to convince master and apprentice that you’re useful to them—immediately you’ll be free of your garbage apartment, you’ll be further from the dangerous parts of town, and without rent hanging over your head you can quit your shitty night job too. But the downside is that if anything happens—if you and Hana don’t get along, if Chaim decides your work isn’t up to snuff—you’ll lose _everything._ A trial period is probably the best way to mitigate that.

“I think that’s a good idea,” you say at last. “My friend and I will go retrieve my things and get them set up here. I’ll have to head out to my night job in a few hours, but until then I can familiarize myself with this place, and tomorrow I can get started helping you out.”

Chaim stands up and crosses the room, holding out a hand. You set yours in it, and he clasps it and pumps it up and down twice.

“I hope that this will work out well for all of us,” he says, and smiles.

“Thank you very much,” you say. “I do, too.”

 

 

“I really _am_ sorry about before,” Asriel says for the third time.

“It didn’t go as badly as it could’ve, so relax already,” you tell him, pushing harder on your shampoo bottle so that you’ll have enough room in the pouch for the rest or your toiletries. “Just learn from your mistakes and do better next time, _Sir Ralsei.”_

He groans at you. “Are you _ever_ going to let me live that one down?”

“Probably one day I will.” You narrow your eyes, grit your teeth, and pull on the zipper until it closes all the way. Perfect. “But until then I intend to get at least a _little_ mileage out of it.”

“Ha ha ha,” he says mirthlessly. “Do you want your knife maintenance stuff put in here or not?”

“Why not throw it in if it fits? You never know when that’s going to come in handy.”

“It won’t be coming in handy at your actual job, I hope.”

You and he are packing up for your first week of hopefully many living in Hana’s room at the tailor shop. If it came down to it you could probably fit all of your belongings into a couple of bags—you don’t have much aside from your wardrobe, some books, toiletries, and makeup—but the rest of it you hopefully won’t have to pack in until next week, so you suppose you’ll leave it here to make absolutely sure you’re not jinxing yourself.

So you drop the smaller bag into the larger knapsack that Asriel’s finished putting folded clothes into, lift it out of his hands, and settle yourself in his lap instead. He winds his arms around you carefully and you tuck your cheek against his chest and close your eyes.

“You seem pretty happy despite me making a muck of things,” he says to your temple, low so it rumbles against the side of your body. “How are you doing?”

“I didn’t expect to actually find something already on just the second day of looking, things have just been that bad,” you admit to him. “So I _am_ happy about that. But also a little afraid. It feels like too good a stroke of luck. I don’t know if I really ought to let myself hope.”

“You deserve this kind of luck more often,” Asriel says, and you relax further into his chest, soaking up all the warmth and reassurance that anxiety’s had rolling off your back like water off a duck these past few days. And Asriel has lots of both to offer, being a fluffy boy with a solid brick build. “If it doesn’t work out, that just means that those guys are jerks who don’t know what they’re missing. And I’ll be here to help you until you get your next big break.”

You sigh. “Ree?”

“Hmm?”

“Thank you.”

“Well, gosh, what for?”

“All of this. Yesterday, and today. I know I’ve been prickly about it sometimes, but it really is nice to know that I have a friend in my corner. I don’t want to lean on you so hard that I can’t stand up by myself anymore, and it gets on my nerves when you get pushy because I _know_ you know that, but… it matters to me that you’ve been so supportive. I don’t think I could’ve handled all this without you.”

Asriel is silent for a moment. Then the tip of his muzzle presses against the crown of your head. “I’m just glad you let me help you, Chara. Whatever you need, if I can do it, I will. If things ever seem really hopeless… I’ll be there, as long as you call.”

You wriggle to get your arm around his back and hug him. “I’ll remember. Thank you.” You give him one last hard squeeze, then ease your grip on him and sit up a little so you can smile into his face. “Thank Undyne for me too, the next time you see her.”

“I will. And I can bring you back to the castle town sometime, if you want to thank her yourself.”

You lean in to kiss the side of his face. It’s a shame you don’t even have enough time for a quickie and cleanup—it would be nice to get in some really long, lazy, cuddly sex. “Maybe sometime.”

And you crawl carefully out of his lap just to make sure you won’t lay around in his arms for long enough to get noticeably hard, because Asriel is a goddamn enabler who WILL make you late if you give him an inch.

He slowly rises to his feet as you pull the knapsack on, and offers you a hand to pull yourself up on, which you take. You get as far as opening the door and making to step out when you turn and come face to face with a raised fist and recoil, automatic and inelegant, against Asriel.

His hands on your back steady you, and with your heart battering at the side of your ribcage like it’s planning a jailbreak you slowly register that the fist must have been raised to knock on the door instead of punch you in the face. Furthermore it belongs to your landlady. You press one hand hard to your chest and try to breathe and settle yourself down so that you won’t embarrass yourself even worse.

For her part, your landlady presses her already-thin lips together until they seem to vanish and scowls at you.

“Of course you have _him_ here with you,” she grumbles.

“Excuse me,” you say faintly. “I wasn’t aware that I should be expecting you. Do you need something? Because I really ought to be going to work.”

The landlady crosses her arms and stares at you like you’re some sort of intruding vermin. “Not aware that you should be expecting me? _Really?_ Do you have any _idea_ the number of noise and decency complaints I’ve been getting about you lately?” She holds out a paper that appears to be your lease contract and shakes it menacingly. “There are families with _children_ in this building and you have been _warned_ about adopting the costume of a _female_ as well as you’ve been warned about… about _copulating_ with that _animal_ behind you. Either stop bringing it here and start dressing like a decent man again or I will find you in violation of this contract, fine you, and evict you.”

_So this is it,_ you think dully to yourself, and then, quite without your planning on doing so, in a very calm voice you’re telling her, “The sheer overweening hypocrisy of this flagrant bullshit coming out of your mouth disgusts me but does not surprise me. Have you bothered to issue the same warning against the married couple three doors down from here? I believe they have crockery-breaking fights at least three times every week. And what about the man downstairs who hosts loud drinking parties both in the middle of the day and the middle of the night? And the wonderful neighbors who keep trying to break down people’s doors, including mine, when inebriated or aroused or when they’ve simply had a bad day gambling? Or are they simply all too white, straight, and monster-hating to be held responsible for their own despicable behavior?”

You have the mild satisfaction of watching her gape at you for a solid half minute before two pink spots appear on her cheeks. “That’s _enough,”_ she squawks, huffing. “Get _out_ of my building, you filthy little—”

You don’t get to find out what she was about to call you, because her arm shoots out as if to grab the front of your dress, and from behind you Asriel’s meaty fist heads her off, gripping her around the forearm.

“If you touch them I will break your bones,” he says.

You risk a peek over your shoulder and catch your breath. Asriel’s black lips are peeled up just enough for your landlady to notice his white teeth, and all his fur is standing on end, and there are white rings around his eyes.

You’re starting to shake just a little—from wrath, probably, as much as from fear. “This is as good an opportunity as any, I suppose. I think I should like to terminate my contract. There is no reason for me to continue giving you my hard-earned money if this is the way you want to treat me as your tenant. I won’t have to deal with you refusing to repair my shower and ignoring any complaints I submit about my neighbors’ violent behavior, and you’ll be free of this oh-so-disgusting monsterfucking queer. Everyone will win.”

“You owe me a _fee,”_ your landlady squeaks, holding very still. “You signed that contract and you _know_ you owe me a fee if you want to break it early.”

“I’ll pay your damn blood money,” you assure her, beaming. The way that she’s staring at you, trying to pull away from Asriel, you’re sure your actual expression doesn’t bear description. “And we’ll be out of here in an hour. You’ll never have to see us again.”

_“I’ll_ pay it,” Asriel says, voice dripping scorn. “I won’t even feel it, and someone like _this_ really doesn’t deserve the money you’ve worked so hard for. Give us that contract so I can make sure she doesn’t try to cheat us.”

You reach for it and pull it out of her crablike grip, holding it out for Asriel to see. Still with the landlady’s arm in his hand, he reaches into the pocket of his shirt and pulls out his purse, popping it open and shaking out the requisite coins.

“Take them,” he says mildly, releasing her at last. “And get the damn hell out of our sight.”

She does, scuttling down the hallway until she vanishes around the bend.

You lean heavily against Asriel’s arm and quake. Neither of you say anything. Even five minutes later he’s still got the same thousand-yard stare, his fur sticking out at odd angles.

You swallow. “Well,” you say. “There isn’t any turning back now. Let’s get the rest of the things packed and leave. I am sick of this building.”

 

 

It’s dark.

It’s dark when your eyes fly open and for a long moment, _too_ long a moment, you have no idea where you are—is this back in your family’s old run-down house? Your horrible apartment? Somewhere else, somewhere worse—?

The creak from up above you comes before you can place the day’s events in your memory and pain _immediately_ swamps your chest, a stippling of bright stabbing pinpricks. Your stomach twists, your throat feels clogged and you can’t see fuck and you don’t know where you are and you can’t _breathe—_

There’s another creak, and then a series of only slightly quieter ones in your vicinity, then the sound of _footsteps right past you_ and it really IS all over for you now, you know your stuttering gasping has to tell whoever this person is EXACTLY where you are, you’re completely helpless—

There’s a click. Low lamplight floods the room.

For a moment you still can’t recognize the wooden frame above you, and then the day’s events slowly start to fill in like puzzle pieces. Morning in the castle. Your series of unsuccessful interviews. The tailor’s. Trial employment. Getting evicted. A drunkard at the restaurant groping your thigh. Threatening to castrate him in the middle of the restaurant. Being sick in the gutter out back, with Keesha holding your hair. Her expression and Sallie’s when you told them you were quitting.

You’re safe now. You’re safe now, hence the delayed panic attack. You’re going to be fine. But thinking that doesn’t make it stop. After all, you _aren’t_ safe in the long run. You have no safety net now. It’s do or die here. If you can’t succeed at this job your choices are to both walk and sleep on the streets, or to let Asriel keep you as his pet.

Ah, god. If only Asriel were here.

Something soft touches your upper arm where the covers have come loose from your body.

You blink.

It’s the one-eyed stuffed cat. This close it looks even worse than before, ripped at multiple seams. New stitchwork holds it together but the battle being fought seems futile.

From the other side of the toy, seated on the rug on the floor, Hana watches you steadily. Now that you’ve made eye contact, they reach one hand up also.

You squirm on the unfamiliar mattress and ease yourself a little closer to upright. With your left hand you accept the fragile toy, holding it as softly to your chest as you can so you won’t damage it even worse. With your right hand you reach out and take Hana’s.

They hold your hand in both of theirs, first squeezing it and then walking their fingertips over your knuckles, tapping in arrhythmic patterns, pausing to squish the pads of each of your fingers. They haven’t got their slate, it occurs to you. But you don’t think you could talk right now, either. You don’t know if you could manage to hold a piece of chalk to write back. So you sit with them, in silence.

It helps. Making an effort to not crush their stuffed animal helps. Their playing with your hand helps. The room still seems to spin around you and your chest aches but at least you can breathe.

You don’t know how long it takes for you to fall asleep again, but they don’t turn the light off, and for as far as you can remember clearly, they never stop holding your hand.


	4. common tongue work in uncommon beds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> bonus warning for sexual harassment and use of gendered slurs in this chapter.

Hana is gone when you wake, but they’ve left the stuffed animal with you. It looks even worse up close: Its mouth and the spot where it’s missing an eye are both torn, and the seam across the top of its head is starting to fray on either side of a black patch that looks recently applied. What you assume is the original fabric it was made from is purple cotton that makes up for its expensive dye by being very low quality. In addition to restitched parts of its body, it’s been patched in multiple places, over spots where the old cotton must have worn too thin. One of the arms looks loose, which you desperately hope is not something you did to it in the night. Setting it back on Hana’s desk, you hold your breath; the doll lists sideways but somehow does not fall apart completely.

You get out a clean dress and a pair of boots and you step into the bathroom with them, shave as quickly as you can—it’s nice to have a mirror that isn’t warped and stained anywhere, for once. When you strip and turn on the shower it’s with the intention to just rinse off your nightmare sweat quickly, but the water is properly lukewarm instead of freezing cold, so you wind up lingering, let it tap gently on your shoulders and your back for just a moment longer.

This may be why Chaim is nowhere to be found when you’re finally dressed and make it downstairs. Hana, though, is standing in the kitchen, pushing fat coins of red potato around in a skillet crackling with oil.

“Good morning,” you tell them. “Is there anything I can help with?”

They tilt their head, apparently thinking, then brighten and gesture at the counter next to them, where they have a few small tomatoes, two green peppers, and one large red onion sitting on a cutting board with a knife.

“Got it,” you say, flexing your hands. “How small do you want the pieces?”

Hana scrunches their mouth to the side and sets the skillet down on the range, holding up both hands and indicating one joint of their finger. You smile and nod to them.

“I wanted to…” you begin, then fall silent. “Actually—it can wait until we’re eating. Otherwise it’s not really fair since you won’t be able to answer.”

You hide behind your hair to escape their smile and get to chopping up the vegetables. Your cooking skills may be rudimentary, but you can handle yourself well enough with a knife; you get the pepper into about evenly sized chunks and the tomatoes too. The onion is a little trickier—this is bigger than you’re used to cutting, and the damn things sting your eyes.

You leave everything on the cutting board and go rinse off the knife as well as your hands. When you’ve turned back Hana has picked it up and is scraping the vegetables into the skillet. They set the board back down and shake the pan on the stove a few times, finally picking up a little glass shaker of some sort of dried herb to sprinkle some in.

They seem to have that situation in hand, so you glance around the room. The small rectangular table has three chairs pulled up to it and two places set, so you sit at the one that doesn’t have a slate next to its plate.

Hana bears the skillet over and scoops half its contents onto your plate before carrying the other half to theirs. They carry the dirty dish to the sink and put it in before returning to sit with you.

“I wanted to thank you for last night,” you tell them at last, crossing your ankles under the table. “That must have kept you up—I’m sorry. And thank you for lending me your friend.”

They make that nearly-silent little giggle again and reach for their chalk with their right hand, forking breakfast into their mouth with their left. _It’s okay. I used to have nightmares like that too, I know how it is. I told Chaim that you had a bad night, so he went to start setting up so that we could have more time._

Your face burns. “This is a great start to my first day. I’m sorry.”

Hana pushes at your upper arm with one forefinger, pressing harder when you don’t look up right away. They hold up the slate at you once you raise your head, pointing loftily at their own words. _Chaim used to look after me when I couldn’t sleep. He understands what it’s like, he won’t get angry._ They’ve got their eyebrows raised at you when you look back into their face, and they keep making eye contact for a few seconds before wiping their writing away to make room for more. _We can try keeping a low light on tonight if that might help you get used to the room quicker, and if that doesn’t work we can try doing other things to make it a more comfortable environment for you._

“I don’t think I’m going to have to ask you to rehaul your entire room just for me,” you tell them, “but I appreciate the offer. The light sounds like a reasonable place to start.”

Even coming that close to admitting that being in the dark in an unfamiliar place frightens you is embarrassing—it’s so _childish—_ so you retreat to your breakfast, scooping up fried vegetables with a fork and taking a bite. The skin of the potatoes is crisp, brown around the edges; the peppers still have crunch to them, the onions are spicy, and the tomatoes are flavorful and warm. Everything smells of olive oil and basil and has exactly the right amount of grease. “This is really good, actually.”

When you look up again, Hana is beaming at you, face so bright you have to look away again all abashed. How long has it been since anyone but Asriel looked at you with warmth this steady? Surely some of it is pragmatism—if you’re going to work together, live in such close proximity, it’s best to try to get along—but even knowing that in your head, it’s hard not to be affected in your heart.

“So does your stuffed animal have a name?” you ask, not sure what else to talk about.

_Seam,_ Hana writes in between bites of breakfast. _It’s pronounced Shawm, because when I used to play pretend as a kid they used to have a Seap._

Oh _no._ It’s been a long time since you’ve been able to trade wordplay with anyone, and you’re charmed almost against your own will. “That’s honestly really cute,” you say, and chew over your thoughts with your breakfast before continuing. “Have you always had them?”

_No,_ Hana says, _and technically they weren’t supposed to be mine, but I took them with me when Chaim took me in because nobody else in the orphanage would play with them anyway. I couldn’t just leave them there._

Their neat Hebrew blurs briefly before your eyes, a swift pain and a small shock. It’s hard to imagine them as a child after knowing them for only one day, but you think of Asriel, small and lonely and unmissed, and you think of yourself. If only the world could be that kind. But that sort of compassion is probably impossible for most of humanity. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was sticking my nose into something so personal.” Maybe you should have—you did at least know you were asking about a treasured childhood toy. “I never really had… anything like that myself. Ree—Ralsei apparently had loads of toys, and even though he didn’t care as much about them compared to getting attention from other people, it always sounded nice.”

When you look back at Hana they have their cheek propped in one hand, and they aren’t… exactly _frowning,_ but there’s a fine wrinkle in between their eyebrows.

_I can only share Seam with you on loan, but if you want a stuffed animal of your own that can be arranged,_ they write.

The thought is so absurd you laugh, and nearly choke on your last bite of breakfast. “At this point, I’d rather save my money—getting closer to my personal goals is more important.”

_Nobody said you had to be the one buying it,_ Hana writes, giving you that same pointed stare.

“That _is_ sweet, but I’d rather have something practical instead. Like—would you mind teaching me sign language? I feel bad making you write so much. I could help you with reading and writing English in return, if you want to.”

_I’d be happy to help you learn,_ Hana says. _And it would be nice to learn more written English than a few names and kinds of fabric, but I think teaching you to sign will be better for work, so that should come first._

“Works for me.” You get to your feet and pick up your plate, make grabbing motions for theirs too until they hold it out. “I’ll do the dishes since you cooked for me.”

Hana comes along with you, leaning against the counter with their slate in their arms. They point out the soap to you and kindly don’t laugh when you nearly burn yourself, still not used to water that actually warms up quickly.

Once you’ve gotten the plates and forks washed and set in the drying rack they poke you in your shoulder, holding up the slate again. _Since we’re here and all, is there anything that you can’t eat? I just realized I should’ve asked that before._

“Mostly cheese and other fermented foods, because of the smell,” you tell them. “Cooked spinach for the same reason. I’m not a fan of its texture, or melted cheese.” You hesitate for a moment and then push yourself to add, “If I’m… not doing well mentally, sometimes I can’t handle preparing or touching raw meat, so I tend to avoid that if I can. I can eat meat all right as long as I know it’s kosher or bought from monsters, but if I say I’m not up to it please just give me some other task. I can’t clean and prepare fish for similar reasons.”

You tense a little bit in case they press you on it, ready to just lie that it’s because you’re squeamish, but Hana just smiles and nods and gives you a thumbs up so you breathe out. You do _not_ want to get tossed out on your ass already and necessitate Asriel swooping in to rescue you after all.

“But I’m not actually allergic to anything,” you tack on awkwardly, “so you don’t need to worry about that at least.” And you busy yourself with scrubbing the last of the grease off the skillet.

After this Hana moves to let you dry your hands on the nearest washcloth, and they lead you through the first floor into the half that’s the storefront.

“Good morning,” says Chaim from the till, and you bob your head a little and mutter the same to him. “We have a regular coming in an hour, so until then Hana can show you around storage or you can ask me any questions you have. I will stay here in case we have any new customers, and if you’re in the back or upstairs, listen for my bell pull—that will mean that I need your assistance. Though, Ruth, I think you will be relegated to bookkeeping and menial work for a while, at least until we can work on your actual sewing skills.”

“Yes, sir,” you say, and Hana sweeps you into part two of the grand tour.

There’s so much to remember that you’re immediately very glad that every room and shelf is labeled bilingually in sloping English and neat Hebrew. Different kinds of cloth, different tools for cutting cloth, thread and yarn and hooks and buttons and zippers, knitting needles and a tiny loom and even a small room with vats for dyeing— _though we don’t actually do that much dyeing or weaving here,_ Hana explains as they tow you around from room to room, _only for very special jobs where there’s nothing quite right we can buy in stores. Both take a very long time, and Chaim is the only one who can use a loom and it hurts his hands if he does it for more than an hour at once._

With all this done there’s still time left before the client, so they bring you to sit in a corner of the shop and give you your first, very basic signing lesson—yes, no, hello, goodbye, thank you, I’m sorry, and the alphabet.

_If I teach you much more today you’ll probably just forget, no matter how fast you learn you’ve got a LOT to remember right now,_ they tell you sensibly, and grin.

“That’s fair,” you say, and lean back in your seat. “But I want to know one more. How do I sign your name? Or do I just spell it out?”

_There are signs for names,_ they tell you, _and I’ll teach you mine, but something you should keep in mind is that sign names are usually given by people for whom it’s one of their main languages, people who can’t hear or can’t speak. So even when you get more fluent, you’d have to get me or someone else to come up with a sign for your name instead of thinking one up on your own._

Then they clean their slate off and write _flower_ on it, scrunching up their hand and touching one cheekbone, then the other. Underneath _flower_ they write _Hana,_ and make the same scrunched hand, tapping their right cheekbone twice and then their left cheekbone twice, almost identical to the first sign.

Returning to the slate, they carefully trace out two shapes that look more like hieroglyphs than letters: 華花.

_This is how to write my name in my birth mother’s language,_ they explain. _Both of the characters mean ‘flower’, you see._

Holy _shit,_ it’s a _pun._ “Oh my _god,”_ you tell them, delighted. “That is _beautiful.”_

Hana _glows,_ and the way their whole face lights up makes your chest feel warm.

This is when the door opens, and you nearly fall out of your seat at the sudden sound. For a very brief moment you can’t hear anything over the ringing in your ears and you’re very conscious of the rapid thumping in your chest, but you force yourself to breathe slowly. Blessedly Hana does not reach out to touch you and steady you—a grabbing hand would just set you off worse. They have no way of knowing this but they’re peering very gravely into your face like they’re attuning their whole self to you, trying to read your cues. It’s as scary as it’s gratifying, meaning _very_ on both counts.

At last you heave a sigh and turn, with some assurance that you won’t look completely wigged out in front of the customer.

Said customer is a tall, bronze-skinned human with black hair combed and then probably gelled back, a long pencilly nose and a hairless face. He, probably, is dressed in cream-colored breeches and a maroon tailcoat that screams money almost as loudly as Asriel’s usual clothes do.

“Oh,” he says when he lays eyes on you. “I didn’t realize you had a new apprentice? Are you expanding the business?”

“No, David’s left us to marry,” Chaim explains. “Ruth has joined us to replace him. Both of you—come here, we’re rechecking Lord Gregorio’s measurements before I start on that velvet coat, and that means it’s time for you to learn to note them for us.”

You keep your eyes downcast in the costume of meekness while Hana circles Lord Gregorio’s shoulders and chest, arms and waist in measuring tape and Chaim watches over their shoulder, calling out abbreviations and numbers that you jot down onto the lines of a notebook.

Once this is done, Chaim pulls a book off of one of his desks and opens it to a page with sketches, pointing out a few different designs: To you and Hana he says, “Bring us the fabric samples. Hana, show Ruth where to find them.”

The little books with squares of cloth in them like the one that Chaim showed Asriel yesterday are kept on a bookshelf in the back corner of the storefront. The one labeled VELVET is on one of the higher shelves, higher than Hana—who’s about two or three inches shorter than you—can comfortably reach, so you pop up on tiptoe and get it for them. They also retrieve the book marked LINEN, and the two of you bear the books over to Chaim and his customer.

Chaim and Gregorio talk colors and patterns for a while. The jacket that the lord is commissioning is apparently going to be quilted on the inside, and he also wants discreet inner pockets; this is about where your interest begins to wander. It would probably be more fascinating to listen to if you knew more about clothes and fabrics and fashion, or at least if it were _your_ clothes under debate—say, if Chaim were planning to make you fancy dresses like that nightgown you were lent at the castle, you could see yourself discussing the fine details for at least an hour.

At last the two men seem to come to an agreement: Gregorio reaches out and shakes Chaim’s hand, and pays what you gather must be this store’s typical up-front percentage of the final price; the two negotiate a time for Gregorio to return to the shop for a fitting when the jacket will be closer to complete. When he leaves, he’s smiling.

Chaim sits down to look over your notes, which he’s added several scribbles of his own to in Hebrew so rough that you can barely decipher it. “I’m going to get the fabric I need for this from the back and get started on it now,” he says. “When I’m back from storage, I think I would like the two of you to go out and check for any good-quality fabric at the market. Keep an eye out especially for cotton and linen—we need to replenish white and our pastels, and anything in jewel tones that’s a good price. We may still have summer weather, but more and more of the upper class and the nobility will be coming to get a head start on their fall and winter wardrobes, so it will be wise to gather those supplies ahead of time.”

Hana picks up their slate. _I’ll handle the money at least this time because I’m more familiar with our budget, but you’ll have to help me actually talk to the vendors._

“You’ll also have to help them haggle,” Chaim says idly, chin raised to peer at what they’re writing, and Hana flushes, turning away from him.

You smile grimly. “I can definitely help with that.” Nothing like a Lower City upbringing to teach one how to pinch pennies with the best of them.

_After that we’ll probably come back for lunch break,_ Hana says, _and after that, unless we get more customers we can either work together on your sewing and weaving skills or you can observe me and Chaim while we work on Lord Gregorio’s coat._

Meaning that after this errand, Asriel will probably be here with your pill, and you can finally get some damn alone time after all the chaos of the past few days. “That sounds good to me.”

 

 

It is nearing noon, and accordingly the streets are very crowded. Beside you Hana makes a face; you smile at them a little.

“You’ll probably have to lead me when we get to the market itself,” you tell them. “I know about eighty different ways to get there but I’m not familiar with the textile shops themselves.”

They nod to you and gesture like _lead the way, then,_ and you do, glancing over your shoulder frequently to make sure they’re still following.

Your route takes you down to the Lower City plaza, looping the Peacemaker and the King’s statue. The crowds increase in size, people bustling to their jobs or to get lunches or in lines at the popular vendors. (You wave a little to the rabbit monsters at their stall; one, the kid, notices you and waves back, then returns to helping his family parcel out food to customers.) Hana grabs the side of your belt and holds on, either worried that they’ll lose you in the press of bodies or not liking the noise.

Out of the plaza things get a little bit better. You’re held up on the way to the lower market street for a while by a procession of carts, right by the greengrocer’s, and it is while the two of you are waiting that you start to hear arguing voices.

“— _not_ what it says on the—”

“—pay what I tell you, ugly bitch, or get out of my store! You should be grateful I’m willing to sell to your kind at all, the way you’re ruining our city!”

At this you turn, your mouth automatically pulling into a frown as your hackles rise. You’ve worked for this grocer’s rival in the past (and still buy from her) because you didn’t like this one’s attitude towards humans with darker skin than his—which includes you—but you don’t think you’ve ever heard him be _this_ openly racist before.

Squinting past boxes of summer squash and cabbages under the awning, you spot the grocer—a white man in his late fifties or early sixties with short white hair, a beard, and round muscles—facing off with a tall monster wearing familiar light leather-and-steel armor over black clothes with the sleeves ripped off, a monster carrying a box of vegetables in one arm.

You take a deep breath and halfway turn to Hana. “You can stay out here and wait, if you want.”

They shake their head very rapidly.

“Suit yourself,” you tell them, and loosen your knife on your hip just a little, so that the blade will catch the light. You hope to god you’re not going to have to use it. Then you throw your shoulders back, plaster a smile to your face that you hope will have a good balance of cheerful with implicit threat, and stroll in beneath the store’s tarp ceiling.

“Oh, Suzy!” you chirp, raising a hand in greeting. Both Suzy and the grocer jump and whirl to stare at you. “So lovely to see you again! I never thought I would run into you here—are you running errands for your fellow Royal Guards? I’m sure Captain Undyne will be very proud to see how you’re helping out. And, oh! Isn’t that the squash that’s on _sale?_ How thrifty of you, if we hadn’t bought some over the weekend I’d be taking advantage of such a good deal too!”

You continue approaching through the pointed small talk, trying to make sure you’ll be audible from outside without actually shouting. Suzy is still staring at you, maybe trying to remember who you are or wondering why you’ve horned in, but the grocer is scowling, looking from you and Hana to Suzy’s breastplate, which you bet has the Dreemurr family crest on it. You were obvious enough bringing up her occupation and Undyne’s name that he’s got to be wondering if it’s really worth his while to keep making a fuss, between potential retribution from monsters in high places and these nice human girls who appear to be on his customer’s side.

Finally he relents. “Just pay the damn thirty bronze and get out of here.”

Suzy drops a fistful of coins onto the grocer’s counter and shoves it at him. He scowls and counts through them, then waves her away with obvious bitterness on his face.

“Come on,” you say brightly, beckoning. “We can catch up outside.”

Blessedly, Suzy follows you and Hana back out, and keeps walking with you until you’re halfway down the block. When nobody comes chasing after you, you fold your hands at your waist and breathe out long and slow, relaxing just a little.

“Oh,” says Suzy suddenly, pointing at the gesture. “Oh _shit,_ that’s where I know you from. Aren’t you that human who was in the castle yesterday? What was it—Chara?”

“Yes,” you tell her. Beside you Hana glances at you, but you guess you’ll deal with the consequences of _that_ later. “Are you all right?”

She shrugs. She really is tall—maybe even near the queen’s height. The top of your head doesn’t quite reach the level of her jaw. “Dickhole wouldn’t let me pay the sale price. Was wondering if I was gonna have to take his face off, so I guess that means you spared me from another lecture.”

“I imagine that if you took his face off that could have caused quite a stir,” you say. “I’m glad we managed to avoid your getting arrested or having to fight your way out of a mob.”

“A mob could _try_ to take me down,” Suzy says, curling her lip back in something between sneer and smile that shows off her rows of sharp white teeth. “I’d welcome the chance to break their heads. But, uh, I’d probably get yelled at for that. Again.”

“A mob that would gather to attack a monster defending herself from a racist brute would _maybe_ deserve to get their heads broken, just a little,” you say, smiling grimly, “but I suppose I can understand why Undyne or the Queen might be unhappy with violence when they’re trying to keep the peace, such as it is.”

Suzy snickers at this. “You know what, you’re all right, for a human,” she says. “Who’s your, uh, buddy over here? They’re awfully… quiet.”

“This is Hana, my coworker,” you say, gesturing to them. They wave a little, peering up at Suzy with shades of what looks to you like nervousness on their face. Chaim did specify that he only refers to them as female in front of _human_ customers, so… “They can’t actually speak, so don’t hold it against them?”

“Oh,” says Suzy, immediately awkward. “That’s… all right then.”

“Hana, this is Suzy,” you say. Hopefully going on like normal is the best way to smooth this over. “She’s a Royal Guard and we met for like two minutes yesterday morning.”

Hana blinks up at Suzy, who may or may not be blinking down at them too, you can’t tell through all her hair, and they stare at each other for an utterly agonizing ten seconds while you all stand around in the street like complete assholes. Then Hana timidly sticks out their hand, and Suzy takes it, and shakes it with a stiffness that’s transparently born of awkwardness because she is very, very careful with the human hand that’s maybe half the size of her own.

“I actually uhh. I _am_ running an errand for the barracks because of the uh,” she coughs and releases Hana’s hand here, “chalk…, thing, and I don’t… wanna keep everybody waiting and get in _more_ trouble, so I uh. I guess I’ll see ya…, if I see ya…?” she says, and peels off to head down the street with a very awkward wave.

Hana, when you glance over to check on them, is waving back. When they notice you staring they lift up their slate. _I thought she was scary but I guess her bark is worse than her bite. What did she mean about a chalk thing?_

“I actually have no idea,” you admit. “It’s what her captain was chewing her out for yesterday when I saw her, so that seemed like a bad time to ask.”

Hana gives the direction in which Suzy departed a Look that’s just exactly the same as the concerned Looks they seem to like giving you. Then they rub their slate clean again. _Is there a reason she called you something different than the name we know you by?_

That thing you were thinking about dealing with the consequences later? You’ve changed your mind. You don’t wanna do that after all. It’s not like you have a choice, though, so you force a smile and shrug at them. “I… will explain about that to you later, maybe tonight. It’s complicated and I’d rather do it in private.”

Hana is already nodding. _Okay, that works for me,_ they say. _Let’s hurry and do that errand, then._

“God, yeah. This has been a little more eventful than I think Chaim might have expected.”

Hana laughs. Here on the busy street, you can only mark it by the way their shoulders bounce; it’s too noisy to hear that tiny little sound. _Maybe just a little bit._

At least the wagons have long since departed by now, and the market is close, so you let Hana take the lead. This is an area of Spiral City where all sorts come to peddle their wares—the farmers and the craftspeople who don’t have their own shops, traders who go up and down the river staying for a few weeks at every major city and town, people from overseas who sell their curiosities here after they’ve sold their main cargo to the castles. It’s colorful and it’s noisy and it has the atmosphere of a festival, encouraging passersby to meander from shop to shop to take their pick.

Hana pulls you past several carts and bright awnings, past a farmer with rows of bell peppers in a rainbow from green to purple, around a gaggle that seems to be crowded at a traveling glassblower’s wagon. Eventually they stop at a booth with an awning over it.

The human running it has brown skin and a cloth lazily wrapped around their head, and they seem to recognize Hana already, grinning and waving when they see the both of you approaching. They bid your colleague to take a look, and Hana does just that, poking through tightly rolled… sheaves? Bolts? You’re not actually sure of the term, but they go over the tight burritos of dyed linen with inquisitive fingertips and a keen eye, picking out a cream and an olive green and a robin’s egg blue. The merchant recites a price, and Hana lifts a hand to their mouth for a while and tilts their head to the side before nodding. They hand the fabric off to you to carry and count out money.

After this they lead you to a second linen seller, whose wares are covered in delicate patterns like wallpaper. Hana takes more time going through these than they did with the previous seller, and you think from the look on their face that if they could afford it they’d quite like to buy almost everything that’s available here, just to have for themself. In the end they only pick two rolls, both with ornate flower patterns on them.

The price is about five silver higher than the last seller, and you narrow your eyes at this and point it out.

“That’s because of our fabric printing techniques,” the saleswoman says, fanning herself idly. “This took more work to prepare for sale than just using dye, so we have to charge more for the artists to get their time’s worth.”

That makes sense, but you narrow your eyes and pout out your lower lip a little so that you can properly play the hardass to Hana’s tender textile aficionado. “So you wouldn’t mind if we went and looked around a little more first, just to make sure pricing’s about the same for other fabric like this?”

The saleswoman sighs and massages her temples. “I’ll tell you kids what, if you buy a third bolt I’ll charge you one silver less for each of them. But that’s the best deal you’re getting.”

Hana’s whole face lights up and they press one hand to their cheek in delight. You smile. “I think that ought to work out fine.”

Their third pick is pale cream cloth with a print of hydrangeas with little ladybug and damselfly details, and they hug it to their chest, beaming. Their obvious joy is so cute that you can’t help but smile a little too.

“Chaim said to look for cotton too,” you say, “so I guess let’s do that while we’re here.”

Hana nods and the two of you wave goodbye to the bored seller, tracing a meandering path through the crowds to another cart vendor. This one is manned by a kid who’s probably only a few years older than the two of you, and is shaded by a tall umbrella made from stiff cloth.

While your compatriot goes straight for the rolls of fabric, you stand at ease and watch, and this is how you notice the stare that the kid is giving them. Immediately your hackles go up: It’s the long and appraising stare that people give livestock before buying, that more than a few of your johns used to give you before hiring you and leading you to a cheap inn room or a suitably dark alley. His gaze is fixed on Hana’s breasts, and the way their soft shirt crumples at their cleavage when they’re bent over to examine the rolls of cotton.

You let your hand fall to your hip and pop your knife an inch out of the sheath again, as a warning. The kid either does not notice or does not take you seriously.

Hana, who if they’ve noticed they’re being leered at is ignoring it very well, pulls out five different rolls of cotton in dark solid colors: Blue, green, red, gold, black. They look to you, and with your left hand still casually on your knife just in case, you stare at the kid and ask, “How much?”

“Ninety gold a roll,” says the kid.

“You have got to be joking,” you say flatly.

“I’m sure as hell not,” says the kid. “This is quality cotton imported from the north and dyed with pigments from Europe. I’m the only merchant selling shit this good in town and I ain’t gonna be staying in town for much longer. You can look all over this market and no one else’ll be selling material this good that’s been dyed this evenly.”

You glance over at Hana, who looks troubled but nods at you a little. But even if he isn’t talking out of his ass, that’s _way_ too much money. You set your other hand on your hip. “We’ll pay you ninety _silver_ a roll.”

The kid picks his nails, sneering. “Eighty gold a roll or stop wasting my time.”

Hana is bouncing on their heel again. “Twenty gold a roll, then, or we’ll take our business elsewhere.”

The kid cocks his chin back and slouches back in his chair. You do not like the obvious bulge in his trousers. “Tell you what. You can take the lot for ninety gold total, if you show me your tits.”

Hana recoils, pressing into your shoulder. You grip the hilt of your knife warningly. “Let me tell you now, _boy,_ you’re not going to win any customers if you keep letting your dick do your haggling. Put the cloth back, Hana, we’re leaving.”

“I’ll call for the guards,” says the kid, grinning wide. “Everybody knows what _your_ kind are like, after all, even if they don’t find you guilty of stealing or cheating they’ll have you tied up for _hours._ Show us the goods, love, if you throw in a little _service_ I can let you have the cloth for even cheaper. Nobody’ll see from behind the cart. As for your friend the ugly Jewess, she can keep her clothes on.”

You flip the knife into your hand. “Try anything,” you say mildly, “and I will carve off your genitals and gag you with your own balls while I stuff your penis up your filthy ass. _We are leaving.”_

“Suit yourself,” says the kid, grinning, but the second he raises his hands as if to circle his mouth a shadow falls over all three of you from behind.

“Problem?” snarls a familiar voice from over your shoulder.

You take a peek, and then take a breath in awe. Suzy looms over the cotton seller’s cart with her considerable bulk utilized to the utmost, positioned just so that the light gleams off her very official-looking breastplate, and planted almost between you and Hana such that no argument can possibly be brooked as to whose side she’s taking. Better, she’s grinning with her muzzle wrinkled and her lips peeled off all her shining teeth, and the few peeks you have of her eyes through her hair make them seem to glow like coals. Compared to this threatening display, Asriel’s growling at your ex-landlady last night would’ve looked like a six-week-old puppy playing at looking tough. All you can think is, _I want to be like that when I grow up._

_“Well?”_ Suzy asks, rumbling from low in her chest. She leans a few more inches in, and the seller squeals and tries to windmill backwards. He overbalances and topples his chair, sprawling flat on his back in the dust. “You’re the one who wanted a guard to show up. You harassing these people? _Seriously?_ Kid… do you wanna lose your fucking face?”

She laughs, deep and bubbling and menacing like a villain in a play. The kid doesn’t answer, but you think you see a dark stain spreading across his lap. He is _literally actually pissing himself._

“Threatening to assault your customers oughtta get you a hefty fine and at least a week’s worth of thinking about your bad behavior in a dirty little cell,” Suzy goes on, “but how ‘bout we just skip all that and you let ‘em have the fabric instead of making me take the money outta your hide.”

The cotton seller nods very rapidly.

“This’s the part where I’m prolly supposed to say that if you wanna get your dick wet you can head to the red light district and just pay somebody like a reasonable goddamn adult, but, heh, looks like you’re doing a great job of that all on your own.” Suzy snickers and pats Hana’s shoulder, then reaches across herself to pat yours with the same hand. She’s still got that box of vegetables under her arm, you realize at last. “C’mon, let’s get outta here.”

You don’t need her to tell you twice. You’re not sure at all whether this is enough cloth for Chaim, but Hana is beelining back the way you came, and once you’re out of sight of the cart they start to shake. You have to hitch the rolls of linen up more than once on your hip because you’re not willing to put your knife away just yet.

“Let’s get to the statue in the plaza,” you suggest to your friends. “We can sit down and take a break there. Everyone in that square is always too busy with their own lives to give a shit about eavesdropping on other people.”

“Uhhh, sure,” says Suzy. Hana takes a deep breath and nods.

The King and the Peacemaker are a relief when you finally get close enough to see them. This spot is old and familiar and it is as close to a favorite place as you allow yourself to have not just because it’s often your meeting place with Asriel, but because you can truly be anonymous here, for short enough periods of time. More than once when you were feeling particularly lovelorn and melodramatic you’ve thought of it as the only real home you have left, maybe the only one you’ve ever had at all.

For now, though, it’s a safe harbor of sorts for you and Hana to drop your cargo and for you to get them sat down, for you both to take deep breaths. Catcallers and creeps are your least fucking favorite part of dressing feminine, and Hana doesn’t have an androgynous build like yours, so they—they probably get this kind of shit a lot more often than you do. Their glassy stare as they gaze down at their feet is the cousin of the look you had on your face when you got fired two days ago. (How was that only two days ago?) You hover your hand over their shoulder for a moment and then rest it there when they don’t cringe away.

“Would you like a hug,” you ask, “or would that make things worse right now?”

They scrunch up their face in a grimace and then sigh and gently topple into your arms almost before you have them open. They’re warm and they’re soft up against your chest—softer even than Asriel, more fat than muscle. You wrap your hands around their shoulders and let them cling to you; it’s… it’s not as bad a feeling as you thought it might have been.

Suzy, who has meanwhile been hovering all this time, finally sets her box of vegetables down and sits on Hana’s other side. She lifts up her own hand and then freezes—the cocksure and vicious fairytale dark knight from the marketplace is utterly gone, replaced by the most awkward person you have ever seen in your life. It takes her the better part of a minute to inch her fingers down and pat at Hana’s back almost timidly.

Hana stays where they are for maybe five minutes before finally straightening up. They scrunch their face up again and run both hands over their eyes, through their hair; then, finally, they relax. They twist at the waist and grab for their slate, producing chalk from you have no idea where to write _thank you._

“What does that say?” Suzy asks, pointing.

“They say thank you,” you inform her, and tilt your chin up to look her in the face. “Really—thank you. That would have been very messy if you hadn’t intervened.”

She turns away, kicking at the cobblestones. “Eh,” she says, reaching up to run her claws through the ends of her hair, mouth pulled into a frown. “It—it wouldn’t’ve felt right to just, not pay you back for earlier, y’know…”

You don’t doubt that she was following you and Hana at a distance, wanting to square your accounts but unsure how to do that, and that’s how she was poised to swoop in as soon as you ran into trouble. You never actually noticed her skulking along behind you even though you’re fairly sensitive to being followed and she’s massive, so that probably means Undyne is correct in her assessment that Suzy has real potential. She doesn’t seem to have any social skills whatsoever, but you prefer awkward with equal veins of sweet and badass to a lot of things.

“We’re just about ready to go on lunch break,” you tell her. “I expect you have to go take those groceries back to the castle sooner or later, but… do you want to at least pick something up with us first?”

Suzy’s mouth tugs to the side, and you can’t tell whether that means she’s thinking about it or she’s going to refuse. Hana, still slumped against your front, turns to give her an impressive set of doe eyes; at this Suzy opens her mouth and then shuts it.

“…… _Look,”_ she says, voice catching at the _k,_ but before she gets a chance to finish that sentence, around the corner arrives none other than your best friend.

Asriel is looking in the direction of the tailor shop, and stops to give the statue a cursory glance, maybe out of habit. He looks back towards the street leading towards the middle class shop district, actually takes a step, then turns back around to stare at your motley crew with round eyes, evidently having finally registered what he’s looking at.

“Ah,” you say brightly. “Sir Ralsei.”

Asriel cringes with his entire body. Hana and Suzy both look at you and then turn to follow your gaze; when Suzy sees none other than the prince himself, she startles so exaggeratedly she nearly lands flat on her back over the statues’ feet, only saved by her windmilling arms catching up against the King’s ample thigh.

Hana raises one hand and waves it a little. Asriel tries on a sheepish grin and waves back.

Suzy, meanwhile, has traded round-eyed disbelief for pointing at Asriel with one claw, turning from him to you and back. _“‘Sir Ralsei’???”_

“He’s incognito, you see,” you say sensibly, or try to; you find that you’re grinning too widely to seem sensible.

Suzy grins wide, snickering. “Yeah, but _‘Sir Ralsei’?????_ Really???”

_“Shut up,”_ Asriel complains. “I’m pretty sure that’s rank insubordination and I could get you in big trouble for it if I wanted to.”

“Uhhh, I think you might have to explain to your mom what you’ve been doing out here if you wanna pull rank on me,” Suzy says, leaning back now. “So I don’t think that’s gonna cut it.”

Asriel makes a face, but still approaches. He’s in somewhat more sober colors today than he usually is—though you very much doubt that double-breasted coat with its shiny gold buttons is something anyone aside from the nobility could afford, the color still sticks out just a _little_ less than his usual fare does, so he must have taken Chaim’s fashion lessons from yesterday to heart. “This is a bit of an… unusual combination. I wasn’t aware that you two even knew Suzy.”

“We met for like two minutes in the castle yesterday and ran into each other again today,” you explain. “Hana and I got sent out to run errands and one of the merchants in the lower market streets was giving us a hard time. Suzy very kindly scared him off.”

Suzy’s aspect immediately transforms from gleeful jock picking on a wimpier coworker to embarrassed driftwood, and Asriel’s eyes flick from you to Hana in your arms to Suzy and _his_ aspect goes from beleaguered to serious. “Are you guys alright? You’re not hurt?”

“A little shaken maybe, but no one’s been physically harmed,” you say. “Suzy got the guy to actually piss his pants, so maybe that will stop him from demanding sexual favors of his customers again for a while.”

Asriel’s hackles raise visibly as you say this, and you suspect that if he’d been there at the time he would’ve had difficulty restraining himself from running the merchant straight out of town, too. But he just takes a deep breath and exhales slow and steady, and even though his fur’s still standing on end he just turns to Suzy and gravely says, “I’m glad you were there with these two, then. Thank you for taking care of them.”

Suzy turns away. “It’s really not that big a deal. They helped me, so I just wanted to pay ‘em back, y’know…”

“It _is_ a big deal,” Asriel presses. “Thank you.”

Suzy just shrugs, and Asriel turns to you instead, apparently deciding to leave it at that so she won’t dissolve on the spot. “I came to visit and bring you your medicine, and the baker lady with the booth on the corner was selling mini fruit pies for really cheap so I got a bunch. Do you guys just wanna split ‘em for lunch or did you have plans? I mean you too, Suzy.”

“I don’t know about Hana, but I didn’t have any plans,” you say. The mention of food has finally gotten Hana to perk up, and they stare inquisitively at Asriel. “I at least would be glad to take one of those fruit pies off your hands.”

Hana looks at their slate, then appears to decide that having you translate for them would be too much of a bother and just makes grabby hands at Asriel, who laughs: “Don’t worry, there’s plenty for everybody. We could even just make a picnic of it here, if you wanted.”

_“I_ can’t,” says Suzy. “I’ve gotta get back to work or Undyne’ll just get all mad again. But uh, if you insist on giving me one of those pies… I guess I could take it to be, like, polite or whatever.”

“I do insist,” says Asriel, and he holds his basket out to her to give her first pick. Suzy just grabs one at random and stuffs the whole thing into her mouth, then lurches to her feet, swooping up the box of groceries to rest it on her hip.

“Later, dudes,” she says, and melts into the crowds. The top of her head is still visible until she vanishes around the base of the castle wall.

“If we’re going to put it to a vote,” you venture, “I would like to just go back to the shop and eat there, and spend the break upstairs with you to calm down. I’ve had enough excitement outside for one day.”

Hana makes a face and nods.

“That’s definitely fair,” says Asriel. “Here, give me some of those cloth things, I can at least help carry them for you.”

 

 

Of your and Hana’s room, Asriel says, “Yeah, this _is_ actually way nicer than your old crappy apartment.”

“Isn’t it, though?” You lean on the closed door behind you and cross your arms as you survey it fondly. “I’m still not quite used to it a hundred percent yet, but Hana is kind. They’re helping.”

“I’m glad that you’re getting along,” Asriel says, and ventures further in. “Which bunk’s yours?”

“Bottom,” you inform him, and he sits carefully, tilting his head so he can eyeball Hana’s bunk above him, maybe worried about hitting his horns.

You’re standing in about the same spot where Hana asked you about your and his relationship and you realized you didn’t quite know how to explain, and that’s probably why you find yourself worrying that question like it’s a loose tooth. Just what _is_ your and Asriel’s actual relationship? He’s your best friend, the only person in the world you feel really safe with. You sucked a lot of dick while you were still streetwalking, but that was in a purely professional capacity: Even though there were johns who were polite and showed concern for your safety and comfort, you could never get into it mentally, and you don’t think you ever even got properly hard to it. But just the sight of Asriel sitting on your bed like this has got your nipples stiff and scraping your shirt, your cock attempting to escape from under your dress. Fucking him is fun and feels good. Holding him, letting him hold you, makes your _heart_ feel good.

He’s your best friend, so of course you love him, but do you _love_ him too, romantically? You don’t know. Life hasn’t given you any sort of rubric for understanding that. Often love stories in books have the hero and the heroine love _everything_ about each other, your poor idiot mother loved your father despite everything, and if _that’s_ the case your feelings for him probably aren’t that kind of love. Asriel regularly drives you insane with the way he keeps trying to take care of you.

All the same, you would not— _could not—_ have survived all these years without him to confide in, to lean on, to hold and to support in turn.

_Friends with benefits_ really does seem insufficient to describe what you have together, so then what are you _supposed_ to call it?

“Have I still got pie on my face?” Asriel asks, and you realize you’ve been staring.

“No. I just got lost in thought for a second there. May I come sit?”

“It’s _your_ bed, silly,” he says, grinning, and you tenderly flip him off first before crossing the room and listing into his side. He tucks one arm around your waist, and you press your cheek into his chest and sigh. There’s a part of you that wants to reach up and stroke his face and pull his long muzzle down to meet your mouth, but you’re comfortable where you are, and you’re not sure if that would be—be too much, somehow.

You’ve _missed_ him, and that’s just downright pitiful? It’s like spooning night before last has unlocked the needy, greedy child in you. Chaim said you’d have two hours before your break ends, and there’s a little clock set on Hana’s table you can use to mark that time. There’s a lot you could talk about but you’d rather just spend that time body to body, secure.

“Ree?” you say against the thrum of his heart.

He runs his big paw over your shoulder. It tingles in your breasts and your crotch as much as it makes you want to sink into his side and purr. “Yeah?”

“How wet are you right now?”

His hand halts near your elbow, and you have a few seconds to worry that you said the wrong thing before he coughs. “Chara, I—I was trying to be polite, like… you’ve had a rough day, I don’t want to ask for sex right now if you don’t feel up to it.”

“This morning _was_ scary,” you say, “but I’m calm now. And I haven’t gotten off in three days at this point, and I missed you. I want to fuck and I want to cuddle, if that’s okay with you. And I am— _very_ wet right now. How about you? Do you want to feel?”

He shudders and groans. Unless you’re _very_ mistaken, the sudden pressure against the base of your jaw is his nipple gone all hard. _“God,_ Chara. I’m gonna flood my pants. _Can_ I touch you? Is that okay?”

You close your eyes and smile. “Give me your other hand, Ree.”

You hold out both of yours for him, and hesitantly he rests the hand there. You press it to your chest, palm flat, and guide it down gently over your breast and down your belly until it’s resting in your lap, a shock of warmth all through the length of your cock. He inhales sharp, all tender awe, and you hum and rest your weight against him so that you can press yourself into that touch.

_“God,_ Chara,” Asriel repeats. He runs the pad of one forefinger up and down the cramped ridge of your cock trapped in your dress.

You moan, don’t try to hold the sound in—you want him to hear it. “I want you, Asriel. Do you want me?”

“Yes,” he says, all hushed and reverent, still petting your dick with his fingers. There’s precome seeping into your underwear and your dress, too, by now. “I do, I really do.”

You turn your face to kiss his chest, stroke the fur of his hand, and he shudders and whines. “How do you want me, Ree? I want to know what you want, I want to know I’m making you happy. Making us _both_ happy. I can turn things down if I don’t want to do them, so let me know what’s on your mind.”

“I want you over me,” he moans, and he’s starting to shudder now. That hard nipple is getting harder against the edge of your chin. “I want your cock in my pussy and I want to play with your tits and I want you to come inside me until you’re too tired to come anymore, and. And I want to hold you. I want to _feel_ you.”

Your cock and your balls and your whole belly throb. You swallow a smartassed remark that clearly what he must _really_ want is for you to come all over yourself before either of you even get undressed, and just kiss his chest again. The fabric of his jacket is fine and smooth and feels new, like he’s never worn this thing before in his life. You open your eyes and look him full in the face and smile, which makes him gulp noticeably. “I think that ought to be fine. And since it’s been a couple days, would you mind terribly if I fingered you and ate you out a little first? I think I might come pretty quickly so I want to make sure you’re stretched out and ready before I’m in.”

Asriel moans as low and sloppy as if you’d just sunk into him to the hilt right now. “God. Please. I’d love that.”

You let go of his hand. “Then we should probably work on getting naked, since I can’t exactly eat your pussy through _those_ pants.”

He lifts the hand off your junk and cocks his head back, nearly missing bopping his nose on Hana’s bunk, and sighs all theatrical and silly. “I _guess._ Clothes are really inconvenient that way sometimes.”

So, even though your balls feel swollen to the point of eruption, you’re giggling as you scoot away to shuck off your dress. You were correct—there’s a damp spot over the lap that means you’re not going to get to put _this_ back on when you go back downstairs; you guess you’ll get to find out tonight if Chaim has a problem with you sowing your proverbial seed in sweet silky wet Boss Monster pussy. You probably ought to be more anxious about this, but Asriel wants you and you want him so bad your mind’s rolling out the flowery erotica prose. You trust Hana to stick up for you if it comes to that.

Asriel, meanwhile, is only just done shrugging out of his fancy jacket and shirt (who, exactly, insists on plaguing him with such an overabundance of buttons? Is it just because anything pull-over is too much of a hassle with those horns? These questions haunt you every time you watch him undress), which means that he gets to give you a show as he pulls his breeches down. He actually turns and rolls his ass as if to present it to you, flashing just a glimpse of wet pink folds before he negotiates his long broad body back under Hana’s bunk to sit and spread his legs for you properly.

You have a seat on the rug in front of him, which puts you at a little higher than elbow-level from the top of the mattress, a very convenient height for cunnilingus—at least when it comes to Boss Monsters. You’ve only seen human pussy in anatomical diagrams, but you’re fairly sure that on a human this organ is meant to be an inch or two closer to the front side of the pelvis.

Asriel shivers and whines, and you reach out with gentle hands to softly spread his fat outer lips. He is _glistening_ with precome, hot and flushed and slick all over, and his clit is swollen. You shift your hands so that you’re holding him open with your right only, and your left is free to graze your fingertips up and over and around him.

“Try not to be _too_ loud,” you warn him, “Hana said we’ll probably be fine but I don’t know how soundproof this building actually is,” and then you dip your middle finger into his vagina just a little, to the first knuckle.

Asriel sucks his breath in noisily and squeezes you, his pussy gently tugging. “I’ll _try,_ but I don’t know how well I really can—ah, _Chara,_ please…”

You stretch up to kiss him where his pelvis starts to curve into his crotch, which is as high as you can reach. He smells like the fancy-ass shampoo they have down at the castle but even better than the one you got to use in the servant quarters, and he also smells sharp and salty with sweat and precome. “Just do your best. You can make _some_ noise, just make an effort to not scream.”

You curl your other fingers so you can slip your middle deeper, stroke him with it, and he twists his body and whines. “You’re not making this easy for me.”

“Well, I don’t think I can exactly do a _bad_ job at this late date, and that wouldn’t be any fun for you anyway.” You draw your hand back and add your ring finger, still a slow soft in-and-out, rubbing the pads of them against the tender uneven flesh. Asriel makes a sound of low longing deep deep down in his chest and flexes his toes in the air on either side of you, and you tuck your forefinger into him too and start to gently stretch them apart in different directions. He whines. His walls press back against you, try to pull you deeper in.

You shift to stroking him carefully as you thrust your hand in and out. Wet precome spills all down your palm, catching on your wrist; your cock twitches a little, balls still throbbing, and you will your body to wait. You scoot closer in, fold your lips into your mouth quick to make sure they’re not going to be dry, and kiss his clit.

_“Chara,”_ Asriel says, choked and squeaky. You pet his lips a little with the fingers of your right hand, enough that it’s not going to throw off your left, and you swirl your tongue around him once, twice, three times. After this you press your mouth all the way in and suck.

Asriel pulses around your fingers, beneath your mouth, hot and silky and sweet. The tip of your nose presses against his vulnerable flesh almost at where his lips meet, and his fur tickles the bridge of your nose. He shivers when you breathe out and clenches on you just a little, and that aches all through your belly, makes your cock twitch impatiently.

You roll your tongue over him as you shift your jaws, careful to keep your teeth from hitting him where he’s sensitive, and he goes all fluttery around your fingers and makes a very high-pitched sound. Hot wet trickles down your chin. You lick at him rhythmic and steady through his orgasm, and sit back as soon as he starts to relax, breath coming in shuddering heaves. Retracting your fingers from inside him draws clear sticky threads of his fluids that take a while to break; you wipe your hand on your thigh. If you tried to be smarmy and use Asriel’s come for lube you’d probably nut all over yourself.

Instead you wipe your mouth and look up at him and smile: His eyes are unfocused and his chest stutters sharp and uneven as he tries to catch his breath. “You ready for more or do you want to take a break?”

Asriel sighs and shakes himself a little. His eyes fall to you, and then travel up and down your body. To be looked at like this, as your body is well on its way to looking the way you want it to—there’s a warmth that has only a little to do with lust in your chest, and a pleasant chill up your back that makes you shiver.

“You’re beautiful,” he says, and reaches out to tilt your chin up in gentle claws, wipes the side of your mouth with a squishy thumb pad—you must have just missed a smear of come or something, but it makes something under your skin light up like the night city. “I absolutely want more. Get up here with me.”

You _want_ to just swarm up the side of the bed and thrust into him in one smooth movement, but practicality dimly warns you that if you try that you’re going to either get tangled up in your own legs and crash onto your face, or you’ll smack your dick on the side of the bunk frame and get yourself badly hurt. So you’re slow about it instead, scooting back on the rug and taking Asriel’s outstretched hand to pull yourself to your feet.

He stretches out on his back for you while you grasp idly at the bedframe, waiting; just as you thought yesterday, the slightly bigger mattress means more room for him—you think you could squeeze in side by side if you spooned. He shifts to stack the pillows more comfortably for him and then resettles into a relaxed and princely lounge, splaying his legs wide for you. Actually having been in the castle, you now have the mental image of his natural habitat to fit with this behavior, and seeing it here against much more humble furnishings is suddenly so incongruous as to be cute.

“What are you grinning at?” Asriel asks, smiling back. “C’mon down here, don’t you want to warm up your dick?”

He reaches between his legs to hold himself open invitingly, and you laugh light and breathless as you can but the precome trickling down your shaft is probably betraying you. “I’m grinning because you’re handsome without even trying, and because you’re also _silly_ despite all your best efforts.” It’s a bit of a squeeze ducking under Hana’s bunk with Asriel in the way, but once you’ve managed there’s enough room to kneel between his legs as long as you bend your head down. “And it’s still _summer,_ in case you’ve somehow forgotten, my dick is already plenty warm.”

“Then you could use it to warm up my pussy,” he says, tilting his muzzle to one side like the coquette he is, brown eyes alight with mischief. “I’m all primed and ready, I want something nice and _hot.”_

You crawl into a lower angle over him on your hands so you can kiss him in the middle of his chest, give his left nipple a quick lick and make him whine. “Okay, you little masochist. You spend so much time trying to enable _me_ that I might as well give you a taste of your own medicine.”

And you grip the sheets with your right hand, shift your weight so you can reach down and get a good handle on your cock without tipping face-first into Asriel’s furry torso. Touching the head to his slick folds burns all up through your spine, and sliding your thighs in flush to his to sink yourself deep, fasten the two of you together, makes you moan. Below you, around you, Asriel whimpers. The sounds clash but his pussy cradles you and the soft weightless press of his hands on your waist when he sets them there feel so right.

You carefully unfasten your left hand from the base of your cock and shift it to the mattress, push yourself all the way into him until his lips are flush with your pubes.

Asriel whines again. “Chara, you’re so _deep…”_

You kiss his chest, the base of his neck, the tip of his nose, everywhere you can reach. “You feel really good, Ree.”

“Move,” he whines. His pussy clutches at you until flickers of light cross your vision, until you’re gasping. “Please, Chara. _Please_ please move. Fuck me, pound me, _plow_ me, the—the rim, the head, it feels so good when you drag it really hard over where I’m sensitive…”

You shiver. Some low helpless sound is rising from low in your chest, and your nipples are so hard that even the way they trail through Asriel’s fur when you breathe arrows pleasure straight down to your cock. “Ree, if I—if I move now I’m going to come.”

He squirms underneath you until he can stretch and nuzzle your cheek. With no warning your vision starts to blur, your eyes grow hot with the prickle of threatening tears. He squeezes at your hips just a little, enough to remind you that his claws are there but not hard enough to scratch. “Then come,” he whispers. “I want to feel you moving inside me, I want to feel you _flood_ me, I wanna watch you fall apart.”

You want to _swear,_ at least, to make some sort of tough noise, some token effort at bravado. Instead the noise that comes out of your mouth is a helpless little mewl, and your hips shudder into brief shallow little thrusts that rock Asriel and the mattress and the entire frame of the bunk bed. He strokes your back and your shoulders and your breasts and catches your mouth over and over again in little kisses so you can drink down each other’s soft cries.

He’s _glorious,_ soft and wet and giving all around you but _tight,_ and tightening, pulling and rhythmic. You’re too much of a mess to know if this is any good for him at all but he hums and pants and makes low happy noises as you stroke yourself through his warm walls and you have to hope that’s a good sign.

You growl and sob just a little and tighten your grip on the sheets and thrust harder, more broadly, and Asriel goes “Oh!” and “oh, Chara, _wow”_ and clutches on you, and an involuntary shudder crawls up the length of your body and you pour out like a storm. Asriel wraps his arms around you and presses his mouth to yours to swallow your pitched moans, and his pussy pulls like he’s milking your cock and you give him everything you have, you come ‘til your wet or his is dripping down your balls, your thighs.

His heart is racing as hard as yours is when you collapse boneless onto his chest, he’s breathing slow and deep as you are, so you hope that you’re right in your guess that he came at least a little at the end, even if his orgasm was a lot lighter than yours. You feel sort of like your dick just served as a lock gate opening after a flood, your balls and your back and your hips and your thighs are all sore, but it’s the good kind of sore, an ache that will soften and settle instead of lingering. Asriel pets your back idly and occasionally nuzzles at your temple.

“That was so good,” he says, still just a little out of breath. “Wow, gosh, I missed having sex these past couple days and all but you came a _lot,_ I feel really full. This is amazing.”

You stir and pull your arms up to cross them over his chest, so you can rest your chin on them instead of stabbing Asriel uncomfortably in the ribs with it. (Fresh stubble scrapes at your skin, and you fight back a fully warranted shudder. How many more months of E is it going to fucking _take_ until you don’t have to worry about growing a goddamn beard, even just a short and patchy one?) “Should I start stocking up on condoms? I never really thought about it, but this has got to be a real mess for you to clean up later, hasn’t it?”

“Don’t,” Asriel says, and kisses your forehead. “I know they cost money you’d rather save, and I like it best raw. I actually… it gets me really hot later, when I can feel the rest of your come starting to drain out. Like I’ll be in class and my tutors will think I’m paying attention but I can feel it dripping, soaking into my underclothes… it’s a secret that nobody else knows, just you and me. They can make me act like a proper prince when I’m at home, but I get to make my own choices when it comes to sex.”

His description stokes warmth through your belly and your soft penis, but you’re still _way_ too wiped for the round two he’s tempting you with. “Nobody else knows but you, me, and whoever does your laundry,” you joke gently.

Asriel makes a face. “I _guess_ so, but nobody’s shown up to give me grief about it, so whoever does the laundry must also think who I fuck is my own choice.”

You stretch to kiss him on the tip of his nose. “You ought to give them a raise to show ‘em how much you appreciate their respecting your boundaries.”

“You know,” he says thoughtfully, “that’s actually a really good idea.”

 

 

The rest of the day passes blessedly slowly.

You have one moment of intense worry and regret that you decided to think with the head between your legs instead of the one on your shoulders, when Chaim gives you and Asriel a sharp once-over on your way to seeing him off, but in the end Chaim just says “be safe” and that’s it. You feel like steam ought to be coming off your face, but Chaim doesn’t say anything more and Hana doesn’t have any comments either, so you just hug Asriel goodbye and get back to work.

The store only has two other customers in the afternoon, both human noblewomen—one is here to pick up her order, and the other is here for a secondary fitting, in which Chaim has her stand still with her partially-finished gown on while he (and sometimes while Hana) adjusts pins and makes notes, checking with her all the while.

You fetch things from the back, and take over note duty once, and otherwise practice with stitching—Chaim has said that once your work is to a level of quality he acknowledges, you can assist him and Hana actually putting clothes together. You have the sneaking sense that that may take a while.

Once the second noblewoman leaves the shop and Chaim is busy with her dress, Hana peels off to keep you company. They go back over the signs they taught you in the morning (you’ve forgotten a few of the alphabet letters, but remember the words okay) and also bring you out yarn and a pair of thick needles, offering to teach you to knit and crochet in between sewing practice. It’s quiet, in the shop—not silent like the monsters’ castle garden, because there’s always the soft rustle of fabric and Chaim mumbling to himself in the backdrop or a stream of small talk between him and customers, but still quiet. Enough to occupy the part of your brain that expects there to be some kind of noise, but not past the threshold that would have you wary and trying to listen in every direction at once.

Dinner is spicy cooked chicken and thick vegetable slaw, both made by Chaim; he warns you that you’re going to be expected to cook (or at least help) a few times this week, which you agree sounds fair.

At night Hana leaves the lights of your and their bedroom on low, and they sit at their desk while you sprawl out on the bed. Some of Asriel’s fur is still stuck in the bedclothes, but at least the two of you didn’t mess them up badly enough that you would’ve needed to change the sheets too. You didn’t really care if you got a little come on your sheets at the apartment because it was a shitty place anyway, but this is Hana’s room too. It would feel gauche to leave the whole place looking and smelling like sex when you and Asriel are done.

Hana taps their fingers on their desk for a while before writing on their slate, _May I ask about earlier today now?_

It takes you a second to remember, actually, just because so much has happened. Your brain catches up, though, just as they pick their chalk back up. “You mean the name Suzy called me, right?”

They nod. The lamplight reflects in their dark eyes and off their shiny hair, and you sit up with an effort, crossing your legs.

“I use a _lot_ of fake names—usually a different one for each job, unless I get recommended to a new place by previous bosses or there will be people who know me in both places. It’s a habit my mother got me into as a kid. We needed money but she didn’t make enough, and I was too young to work at all really, let alone multiple jobs, so we made up a fake identity for me to do small jobs under—sorting shelves at the library, running messages, that sort of thing. It only got more vital after my parents died and I had to support myself. It’s good to stay untraceable.

“And it was good to have a way to experiment with gender stuff in a way that wasn’t permanent, too. To try on a lot of feminine identities, find out what would get me read as a girl successfully, all of that, in a way that wouldn’t have serious repercussions that would affect my other jobs or identities if I messed up.

“And that way I also got to keep my truest self private. There aren’t very many people who know my real name, the one I chose for myself to keep when I decided I was done with the one my parents gave me.”

_Ralsei gave you this… weird look when you called yourself Ruth, in our interview,_ Hana writes, looking at you.

Do you want to admit this to someone else, and admit it so early? Even using it at all had been a leap of faith. _Can_ you afford to keep doing that with Hana and Chaim? There’s probably a point past which they’re not going to catch you, and thus far this is a nice job that you’d like to keep.

“How much of this are you going to tell Chaim?” you ask them.

Hana shakes their head and adds _None_ to their slate. _He’s a good person, but things like wanting to experiment… I don’t know if he’d really understand that. He’d at least try to respect it but he wouldn’t get it, maybe._ They wipe their slate clean again. _Do you want me to call you Ruth or the name Suzy called you?_

“Ruth is…” You hesitate and look again at Hana, at the only other human being who’s anything like you at all out of all the humans you’ve ever met in your life. “My mother said once that it’s what she would’ve named me if I’d been born a girl. It isn’t the name I chose for myself, but I’ve been saving it for something special.”

If you aren’t _very_ mistaken, Hana blushes just a little.

“You can call me Chara in private if you’d like—if I get to keep this job we’re going to be pretty close for at least a few years, I guess you might as well.” You gesture for the slate, and when they pass it to you, you write your name in English and then in Hebrew.

You hand it back to them, and they run their fingertips over the letters, smearing them a little. _What’s it like to pick your own name?_ they write. _How did you choose yours?_

“Chara is the name of a star in a constellation called the Hunting Dogs,” you explain. “I read a lot to pass the time at the library, and that’s where I found it. At the time, I…” You hesitate here, not sure how to explain. “I didn’t—my mother didn’t get to teach me much because of our circumstances, I think I said that yesterday, but I didn’t. I didn’t know there were other options, besides being a boy or a girl, until I met Ree and got to know more about monsters. I’d been toying with picking a new name before I knew the right words for how I felt about what kind of person I was, but all of those names still felt too feminine. Learning I had more options than boy or girl opened up a lot of doors for me.

“And I was into astronomy at that time, so it all felt very serendipitous.”

Hana thinks for a while, tapping fingers on their desk. They erase their slate and tap a little more with their left hand, wiggling chalk between the fingers of their right like they can’t decide on what to write or whether to write it at all.

You’ve put the idea in their mind, you suppose. Whether they want to do anything about that is up to them.

In the end they pull a face and write, _Can I ask another question about something different, if it’s not too intrusive?_

“I guess I can always tell you that it’s not your business if I don’t want to answer,” you say. “But yes, you can at least ask.”

_What was… the medicine that Ralsei said he was bringing to you? Is it something that we can help with?_

“Oh. It’s not—it’s just my hormones. He insists on buying them for me because they’re supposedly so expensive I would faint if I knew _how_ expensive.” Hana still looks blank, so you gesture vaguely around your chest. “It’s for helping me make my body look the way I want it to. In-between, neither, harder to slot into the only two labels the Christian hegemony allows people. The—the word for wanting to look like that if you aren’t born that way naturally is Salmacian,” you finish a bit more awkwardly, because they’ve pressed their lips together just slightly and narrowed their eyes, and a wrinkle has formed between their eyebrows. It’s a searching, private sort of expression.

When they’ve been staring off at their desk corner for a while and your palms have started to get a bit clammy, you clear your throat a little. “Hana…? Did I say something wrong…?”

They startle in their seat and whirl around to look at you like they forgot you were here. They blink a few times and then pick up their slate.

_You didn’t say anything wrong. I just… never even considered that anyone would_ want _to look like this. Part of me can understand, I think, but part of me… can’t._

You get the distinct sensation that you’ve set a foot onto rotten ice without realizing until you rested your weight. You’re not sure what to do from here—press onward, or retreat? But surely it would be a worse misstep to press Hana on things they might not want to volunteer. After all, _you’re_ the stranger here, the newcomer in their space.

(But they’ve asked a lot of you—maybe a great deal more than they’ve realized they have. It’s not fair to be asked to lay yourself so bare without some sort of reciprocity, is it?)

_It’s just very new,_ they add to their slate suddenly. _I’ve always been made to feel like… like the best I could be is a curiosity. I never would have thought that an appearance like mine could be… desirable._

You smile a little. “Well, if Asriel is anything to measure by, the people who gave you that sort of impression were extremely wrong. We were sleeping together since before I started taking estradiol—taking estrogen pills, but he’s never treated me unkindly or disrespectfully since. If anything, he seems to enjoy my new breasts almost as much as I do.”

Hana’s blush returns, but this at least makes them giggle.

“I have a question too,” you say on impulse. “What… gave me away, during the interview? You said that someone who wasn’t—intersex, or Salmacian, wouldn’t have noticed. Most cis people don’t even notice.”

Hana pauses and then strokes one fingertip over their jaw. They then drop their hands to their chalk and slate. _That sort of… patchy stubble from where facial hair grows in really thin and really short, but still so noticeable that you have to shave it. I have that too. And the way your clothes hang on your body. Most cis people who aren’t androgynos or tumtum don’t have the sorts of proportions we have. It’s difficult to explain. But I don’t think you need to worry about it from anyone who both isn’t familiar with the differences already, and doesn’t spend most of their time staring at bodies and the fit of clothes._

“That’s good, because I about had a heart attack.”

They make a face. _I really am sorry. Thinking back on it that was just as insensitive a thing to ask about, especially in front of Chaim and Ralsei, as when Ralsei outed you._

You shake your head. “Well, we can’t really take that back now, and it’s… it’s nice to know we _can_ talk about things like this instead of having to keep it a secret from each other. I know how hard it is to be alone.”

This makes them breathe in sharply, of all things, brings _tears_ to their eyes. They set their slate and chalk down, wipe their hands on their slacks, and raise their knuckles to their face to blot the wetness away.

“Did I say something wrong?”

They shake their head, and sniff once, and pick up their writing materials once more. _It’s just that—it IS nice, that’s all. It IS nice._ And, after a short pause: _Thank you for being here for me, today._

You shake your head back. “I didn’t really do anything. Thank Suzy, if we see her again. Next time we have to go out there I’ll get out my Man Clothes. Fewer people will bother you if you seem to have a chaperone.”

_It might not seem like much to you, but it was a big deal to me._ They duck their head, not quite looking into your eyes, and reach out to touch the back of your hand just a little before returning to the slate: _I hope that you and I can be friends, Chara._

Just the sight of your name in their round handwriting—it makes you feel a lot warmer than you thought it would.

You smile at them. “I hope that too.”

Hana _beams_ at you. There is simply no other word for it: The faint color on their cheeks, their smile, the silent laugh, it spreads warmth like sunlight through the room.

And the part of you that wants to bask in that light—well. It’s more significant than you would have guessed it might be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic got fanart from [@alad_art](https://twitter.com/alad_art/status/1072365636108644353) on twitter! thank you!


	5. nightgown and candle down the staircase to me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> additional warnings for this chapter include: depictions of grief, past violent death of a family member, a couple of nongraphic emeto mentions, and depiction of possessive behavior.
> 
> in this story frisk is written with the intersex variation [pais](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_androgen_insensitivity_syndrome).

Comparatively speaking, the rest of the week is uneventful. As she warned you, the baker bunny monster’s shop disappears from the square, leaving unoccupied space for someone else to eventually set up a new stall; the corner looks wrong without her there. You have ample opportunity to miss her on the occasions you get sent out on errands with Hana, but those errands stay peaceful: You make sure to wear baggy shirts and trousers and tie your hair back so that you’ll be parsed as male, and for the time being this appears to be enough to prevent random creepers from thinking you and they are easy pickings. Aside from the errands, you are assigned to make dinner one night, and have a reasonably okay go at frying up eggs with lots of vegetables in them—they wind up a bit burnt but you don’t burn down the kitchen, so you are fine with these results.

Otherwise your days manage to settle into a routine. You help Chaim and Hana with notetaking, bookkeeping, fetching supplies, keeping track of customers, and cleaning the store; you show Chaim your sewing capabilities and he sets you to practicing new techniques and getting faster at them. Hana teaches you more sign language (you still don’t know enough to hold a decent conversation, but at least your vocabulary is growing) and starts to show you how to knit and crochet, which you think you like a lot better than sewing so far. It’s more difficult to stick yourself accidentally with the needles, and it’s the perfect balance between productive, focus-intensive, and repetitive to be calming. Asriel comes to visit every afternoon with your pill and for alone time, which you split up between talking and fucking and just resting calm and quiet with his arms around you.

On Friday night Chaim sits you and Hana down for dinner with the Shabbat candles and a little booklet with the prayers handwritten into them. He is halfway through, you following along with a fingertip because you don’t know the tune he’s using or the prayers themselves, when apropos of absolutely fucking nothing tears start to pour down your face and there’s nothing you can do to stop them.

“Ruth,” Chaim says very gently, “is something wrong?”

“No, it’s just—” you can’t even speak without your voice grinding and cracking, _fuck._ “I’ve never—I’ve always wanted but I’ve never—”

Hana reaches out to squeeze your hand in one of theirs, and Chaim puts his own hand on your shoulder, and you crumple.

“Let us practice the prayers after supper,” he tells you. “You are such a quick learner that I’m sure you’ll be able to do them with ease by the end of the month.”

It hasn’t even been exactly a week yet. His easy admission that he’s already decided to keep you, that you don’t have to be worried anymore that he’s going to turn you out on your ear, only makes it harder to stop seasoning your plate with salt water. The lack of a real safety net just in case still gnaws at you but this is the closest thing to _real stability_ you’ve had in so many long years.

Over the next several days, whenever you let yourself into your and Hana’s room to turn in for the night, you keep discovering little books left on your bed: Excerpts from Torah and from Talmud, and commentary on both from various famous rabbis—many Orthodox but also, to your surprise, plenty Conservative, with a few Reform and Reconstructionist thrown in as well. Some of these Chaim had to have had lying around beforehand, but he must have gone to pick up the others at various congregations around Spiral City. You keep one or two on your desk to look through in idle moments and pack the rest into your bags for safekeeping.

It is in this fashion that the worst of summer passes you by: With a roof over your head, and paychecks that mostly manage to go into your bank account instead of getting eaten up by rent and daily necessities.

Spiral City is never exactly _peaceful_ —there are still riots, and whenever your talks with Asriel turn towards politics or castle life his expression goes grave—but you feel that you could almost, _almost,_ begin to relax.

 

 

You’ve traded lamplight for a very small and unobtrusive light that only illuminates your and Hana’s room very faintly. This is still the only light when you wake, so it still must be very early.

It takes a minute, even so, to realize that the frame of the bunk bed is rocking subtly and that this is what’s awakened you. Brain still fuzzy with sleep, you briefly ponder the possibility of an earthquake—that wouldn’t be completely unheard of here—but when you reach out to touch the wall you can’t feel the tremors through it.

Finally you pick up on the shallow rhythmic breathing from above you: Ah, you think, and close your eyes again. If you can’t get used to the movements of the bedframe quickly enough to go back to sleep, you can just sleep when they’re done.

However they’re masturbating up there, it’s not rough enough to make the bedframe really rattle. Though it’s hardly as if they could cry out or anything, that still means it’s quiet enough for you to hear them—the tiny hitches and changes in their breathing, from quick little gasps to long drawn-out exhales.

Habit and experience tempt you to try to listen harder, focus on their reactions to gauge when they’re about to come, but it’s hardly like you’ve got some client’s dick in your mouth or like you’re giving Asriel head; you don’t have to brace yourself for Hana’s orgasm so that you don’t choke (or even more unsexily, manage to get semen up your nose). You pull the blankets up over your ear so that Sex Work Brain won’t get the better of you, dimming the noise to the point where it’s too faint for you to follow little cues. Hana’s fucking themself, not you; it’d be weird to pay too close attention.

Though—you roll over to find a more comfortable position, stretching your legs out so that your feet are on a cooler section of mattress—it’s a little sweet that they’re comfortable enough to jack off in the same room as you when they think you’re asleep.

Abruptly the rocking stops. You blink in the low light—their breathing’s awfully quiet if they just came, but it’s not like everyone spends the first few minutes after orgasm gasping for breath—and then the bedframe creaks the way it does when they’re scooting over to the ladder to climb down, but instead of appearing on the ladder, Hana pokes their head over the side of their bunk. Even in this lighting you can tell that they’re blushing fiercely, and they shake their head and even extend a hand to wave at you like _I’m sorry_ or _don’t get the wrong idea_ before retreating.

“It’s okay,” you tell them, and yawn. “You weren’t bothering me, I’m just going to go back to sleep. You can go ahead and finish up if you want.”

You think you can hear them—gasp, or make a little noise, or something; there’s more creaking from above you, and this time they do trickle down the ladder. They back towards the door to the room, face still scarlet, and excuse themself in a flurry of rapid signing that you can’t begin to follow.

You yawn again and close your eyes. Wherever they want to finish their business, it’s all the same to you. You never even hear them come back in—you fall asleep too quickly for that.

 

 

There is something unusual about today’s morning routine.

Hana avoids your eyes and Chaim’s all through breakfast. They turn red all the way to their ears every time you turn and see them peeking at you through their hair, and then they find something else to do. Behind their back, Chaim pushes his glasses up on his nose and raises just one eyebrow at you, and all you can do is shrug—it’s not like _you_ have any idea what’s eating them.

This awkwardness continues until Chaim carries his plate to the sink. “We don’t have any appointments for today, but I’m going to go set up the shop anyway,” he says. “Ruth, come to see me when you and Hana are finished washing up. We’ll have to sideline it if any customers arrive, but the weather will be getting cooler soon and that’s as good an excuse as any to make you an outfit or two of nicer clothes.”

_“Make…?”_ you repeat, wide-eyed.

He pauses at the doorframe, leans on it, smiles back at you. “Of course, silly child. We are tailors—we would hardly buy them from somewhere else! Though, we will have to go to a cobbler to get you the winter shoes to match. Your boots are in a very sorry state, and I won’t have your toes getting frostbitten if I have to send you and Hana out on errands in three or four months when it’s cold enough to snow.”

And then he goes off, leaving you gobsmacked. Last night before you went to bed you were reading about Maimonides’ levels of charity from one of the books he’s given you, but here, you think, in real life, is an actual person who would probably leave coins in obvious places in his clothes for pickpockets to take in actual reality. Except that in your case he actually insists on actually being generous at you to your face, which is a different level of charity you’re pretty sure, but—well, he is the kind of guy who actually adopts children to train them as his apprentices. So maybe you shouldn’t be so surprised.

But you are. You don’t think you could ever be this materially giving to anyone, not even if you ever became rich.

You’re still musing about this while you wash dishes, and you’re so lost in thought that you just about jump out of your skin when Hana timidly taps you on the shoulder. You whirl around and they’ve got both their hands up in front of their chest, palms out, slate trapped between their forearms and their breasts. They’re so wide-eyed you can see a rim of white all around the coal gray of their irises.

“I’m sorry,” you say, shutting the water off so you can pick up a cloth and dry the very clean plate in your hands. “I was spacing out.”

In your shitty ex-apartment you had to be extremely tired or extremely distracted fucking Asriel to drift away like that, because you were always, always afraid of your neighbors. But your thoughts wander more here. You relax more here.

That is something to unpack another time, because Hana has got their chalk out and is scribbling: _I am so so so so so so sorry,_ and you open your mouth to tell them that it’s not a big deal, you’ve been scared way worse plenty of times, but their hand flies back to the right side of the slate to scratch out a second line of sprinting Hebrew: _for last night. I thought you were asleep._

It takes you comically long to realize what they mean. “God, you don’t have to apologize. I really, really, really don’t mind, I promise. It’s been your room for a lot longer than I’ve been sleeping there, and you know what Ree and I do in there more than half the times we go up there to spend time alone. It would be the height of hypocrisy if I started clutching my nonexistent pearls. It doesn’t make me uncomfortable, and I’m not going to care if you wake me up again the same way by accident.”

You stand side by side at the sink for several long minutes, watching Hana’s face turn redder and redder, long enough to become crawlingly certain that you’ve said something very wrong. They won’t even look you straight in the eyes. But in the end they just wipe the slate off and start to write again.

_You’re really… relaxed about,_ and their hand pauses just a second before they actually write _sex things, aren’t you._

You open your mouth to say _occupational hazard_ and then close it very fast. “Is Chaim… very traditional about it? Reserved?”

_If you mean is he the sort of person who grumbles about it when we see a streetwalker with a big nose because good Jews don’t sell their bodies and shakes his fist about cis men flirting hoping that they… stick to kinds of sex that aren’t sinful according to some people, then no,_ Hana writes, and you try not to make it too obvious that you’re exhaling in relief. _He’s just not interested, at all, so it’s not ever something that we’ve… talked about beyond him explaining to me how babies get made._ They smile a little and wipe the slate clean, start afresh. _I told you that he took me in because he didn’t care for marriage, but he wanted to avoid marriage because he didn’t want to worry about having to personally make his own heirs. That’s how much sex isn’t something he wants for himself._

“Lucky us, then,” you say, turning so you can lean back against the counter. The hard edge pinches at your back but it hurts your knees less than standing still without support. “If he had a wife and kids, we might not be living here right now.”

Hana nods.

“I guess _I_ should maybe apologize for last night, then,” you tell them, trying to smile though you know it’ll sit awkward on your face. “I’m so used to it—to sex—being a casual part of my life that I forget it’s more private to other people. I’m sorry if my being so candid shocked you.”

They shake their head slowly. _It’s all right. I was surprised, yes, but… sometimes I want to talk about it, or ask about it. And I can’t say anything to Chaim because he won’t have the sort of life experience to be able to answer me, and I don’t want to bother him._

“I think it’s normal to be curious, if you’re the type to be interested,” you tell them. “If you have questions, you can ask me—as long as they’re not too specific to me and Ralsei. Some things he might mind me talking about without him knowing first.”

They’re blushing again. You want to smile at them again, but maybe they’ll take that as you being patronizing, or making fun of their ignorance. _Maybe sometime. If I can work up the gumption for it._

“How many hours are you two going to spend washing the dishes?” Chaim calls from the front room. “We aren’t working after dark or tomorrow, and that includes on your clothes, Ruth, so why don’t you come out here so that we may get started on them before your gentleman friend arrives.”

You wince a little at his calling Asriel that, and Hana laughs their wheezy little laugh and flaps a hand at you, so you bow to them a little to indicate that you’re leaving the remaining dishes in their care, and only then do you wipe your hands on your (old, many-times repaired) slacks before you step over the threshold into the store proper.

Chaim is sitting at the same work desk where he first interviewed you, today mostly cleared with a few of his swatch books, a cheap notebook, and a number of pencils strewn across the surface. He waves you over, and you trot across the length of the room to pull the chair out and seat yourself.

“You really don’t have to do this for me,” you say for the sake of it, “so I’m grateful that you’re offering to do it even so.”

“You are my employee,” Chaim says, “and you are my apprentice’s friend, and beyond that you are my ward. That makes your well-being my responsibility, and that you don’t believe this to be the case likely means whoever had you in their care last—employers, guardians—should be ashamed of themselves.”

For a while you wonder if you should remind him that you’ve been on your own for seven years now, that there just hasn’t been anyone there to be ashamed, but he said _employers._ You think about Emil’s manful, self-satisfied gift of your severance pay, his sureness that he was doing what was in your best interests; you think about the restaurant, where you and the other waitstaff were left to your own devices in the matter of protecting your bodies from drunken customers.

So “It would be a better world, I think, if more people out there agreed with you” is all you say in reply. You take a breath and flex your hands in your lap, shift your feet on the floor. “What sorts of clothes did you have in mind?”

“That’s what I would like to ask you,” Chaim says. “It will be something for fall and winter beyond it, so heavier fabric than what you have been wearing lately, and probably around the level of ornamentation as most of Hana’s day clothes. Do you have any specifications for me? Things that you like in clothing?”

This you think about for a few minutes. Delicate and ephemeral pretty clothes like that nightgown Asriel got for you that night he had you stay in the castle are what you would wear all the time if you could afford them both monetarily and in terms of your own day-to-day safety—you still think about how you looked and felt in that dress so often. But you absolutely could not wear that in the Lower City; it would get torn to pieces, and you with it. “Plain enough to avoid standing out, and easy to move in. Fabric that doesn’t snag easily. Definitely pockets. And… for more feminine clothing, one or two modest pretty touches, if you could.”

“I most certainly could.” Chaim  has already opened his notebook and is sketching out a very rough image of what you realize with a start has to be you—over the basic outlines he adds in a skirt that hangs past the drawing’s knees, then turns the pencil around and taps the page with the eraser end. “My assumption is that you will wish to start with a dress or skirt. With linen—probably plain and undyed, mind you—we can create volume here so that not only will the skirts be loose enough for free movement, but it will help to make your hips look wider as well. And you will be able to wear leggings or hose beneath in winter, against the cold.”

You shift in your seat so that you can crane in over the design without your head getting in Chaim’s way. “I like that, the—the silhouette there. Your idea. I’ve been working here long enough to trust your eye for clothes.”

Chaim chuckles. He adds a separate shirt with sleeves down to the elbow and a high collar, and a short-sleeved jacket over that, a—a bolero, you’re pretty sure the style is called. “Trim on the skirt and the jacket in a color that matches or accents the shirt, and some embroidery on the hems of the shirt. Hana can make some little baubles for it—cheap materials that will still look nice.”

“What colors for the shirt?” There’s cotton, there’s wool, you’re assuming that you’re not going to get offered the sorts of vivid blues or violets that Asriel would wear, the kind that would be stupid to flaunt in the Lower City anyway.

“We have more available in cheaper and common dyes,” Chaim says, as you’d expected. “That would help your clothes stay plain as well. Red or green or gray, perhaps; there’s yellow but it isn’t really your color.”

“Yes, I’d expect it’d just make me look more sallow.” There’s more red in your skin tone than gold but that’s still one fuck of a lot more gold than the cool undertones of truly white skin. You’ve actually had potential johns turn their noses up at you because you were too sallow to match their fantasies of fucking some delicate white waif-boy’s mouth. “Which colors do we have most of? I like dark reds and I like greens, and both would probably go well enough with that sort of sandy undyed color I’m expecting most of the outfit will be. I’ll ask for the other color if you decide to gift me clothes again.”

“Red, then,” Chaim tells you. “We have some lovely russets and some brighter colors too. You’ll match with Hana this way; the two of you will look more official when you’re on work errands. This is good.”

He shows you cotton swatches first, for the shirt; there’s a red as bright as candied cherries or autumn leaves that you like a great deal, but it’s too bright and attention-grabbing for the Lower City, so instead you choose a darker hue that’s almost burgundy, almost the color of wine. Chaim marks down his shorthand for the exact fabric you want, and then he has you stand still in the middle of the room, calling Hana over—you never even noticed that they’d come out from the back—to take his notes while he takes your measurements.

It’s quiet aside from his occasionally speaking numbers, and it’s comfortable too—not the way it’s comfortable when Asriel manhandles you, years of friendship and skin-to-skin intimacy, but a different kind of ease that you think comes from Chaim’s professionalism. You’ve seen him at this before, grown used to the rustle of measuring tape; you already had a sense but now have more certainty from talking to Hana that Chaim’s work-knobbled hands won’t seek anything from your body. It’s strange. Refreshing too, in a way.

All his measurements taken, Chaim waves Hana away and lets you know that you can relax. “I can’t work on this for you tomorrow because it’s Shabbat, but I will get the basics started this afternoon if we don’t have any callers. I will have to prioritize client work, but I will likely have this done for you by the end of the next week.”

You clasp your hands at your waist, smile at him. “I really appreciate it.”

 

 

Asriel, when he arrives, is in a raincloud of a mood: It’s not that he snaps at you or at Hana, or Chaim who’s on his way out; he’s actually very polite in handing Hana groceries that he picked up on the way to treat all three of you to lunch. But you can spot it in the way the corners of his mouth turn down, and how his feet won’t stay still. So when Hana takes the food with a smile and heads into the kitchen, leaving you and Asriel alone in the storefront with the door locked behind you, you lean into his side and set your head on his shoulder.

“Do you want company or cuddles or just cock today?” you ask, mostly whisper.

Asriel shivers. “I want it all. I want to sit with you and I want to talk to you and Hana and it’d be a relief to just… do it really hard.”

You snake your arm around his lower back and squeeze. “Then let’s go upstairs quick while Hana’s getting food ready, and we can come back down for your company and cuddles after that. Sound all right?”

He squeezes his eyes closed and nods, and up the stairs you go.

It is _very_ quick. You shut and lock the bedroom door behind you and Asriel sits on his haunches next to the mattress; he gets your pants open and nuzzles and licks at your cock until it’s hard all the way and your chest is heaving, and then he undoes his belt to pull his own breeches down and off. Naked from the waist down, he plants his arms and chest on your bed and lifts his hips at you with his feet spread wide and his claws grasping at the floor, all tremors and whimpers and glossy wet pussy.

You slide your pants down your thighs and let them puddle at your hips, spread Asriel’s lips as gently as you can, and slide into him to the hilt. He moans low and wraps around you warm and welcoming, breath hitching at the same time you feel that weak spot just under the head grind through that spongy sensitive part of his walls.

He muffles his cries in his arms and the bed while you grip him by the flanks and fuck him in brisk strokes, arched over his back, your breasts wobbling and your balls gently impacting his lips. This is the position you always used to fuck in when you snuck into the woods for quickies, and the patterns of light and shadow from the canopy down his back was a lot more exquisite than the lighting in this bedroom, but remembering it makes your dick throb, which makes Asriel come, tightening and tugging on you, soaking you ‘til each thrust is sloppy and raucous.

You manage to hold out ‘til he starts to come again, and the seductive rolling of his walls is too much this time; you jostle his hips with yours and whimper and pour your come into him until your cock is too soft and slips back out. After this you stand still and pant and hold onto Asriel for dear life so that the dizzy floaty waves of pleasure don’t make your legs give out and bring you crashing ignobly to the floor.

“Better?” you gasp.

“God, yeah,” Asriel grunts. “I like being able to see your face when we’re having sex usually but _fuck,_ the way your balls hit my clit in this position feels _amazing.”_

He’s still open, and at this angle you can almost see into him; your come is starting to trail lazily out just a little, dripping down his lips. You groan. “Ree, _god,_ are you _trying_ to make me want to go again? Hana’s gonna think we’re standing them up for lunch.”

Asriel whines. You can _see_ his lips throb; your cock aches but it’s already starting to bulk up with blood again. “Please, please, please. I wanna stop thinking. Stuff your dick in me and pump me full of come. Just one more time. We’re both gonna come right away.”

“You are a _shameless enabler,”_ you moan as you feed the head of your cock back into him, soaked and giving and hot and greedy. You punctuate this with snapping your hips in sharp; he clenches down, walls twitching around you, yelping and shivering as he comes. “Only one more time—holy god, you’re so tight right now.”

He’s grinning up on the bed; you can see the flash of his teeth even in the shadow of the upper bunk. “Good thing you—oh, oh Chara!—good thing you lubed me up real good already, huh? Ohhh god keep grinding right there, Chara you’re so _perfect,_ Chara—”

You come in about a minute and a half, sloppy and half crying, give him everything you have left. He hums tender underneath you and blessedly does not beg you for more this time when you pull out.

“I am,” you say between gasps, “going to go take a piss and wash my face, and then I am going straight downstairs to eat, and you can join me and Hana there if you want to socialize and get hugs after all.”

“Mmm,” says Asriel, tucking a hand between his legs and immediately getting come all over it. “’M just gonna finish myself off first, go ahead.”

You stay in the bathroom for a few extra minutes after you’ve relieved yourself and cleaned off your penis and your thighs: Your face is _scarlet_ from the vigor of your sex, and not even splashing yourself with cold water really helps, it only makes the color start to recede in blotches. It takes time for your color and your breathing to go back to something like normal. The bedroom door is still closed when you pass by on the way to the stairs, and through it you can faintly hear Asriel’s unmistakable long pleased moan as he comes.

That way lies sex until you pass out from heatstroke and/or dehydration, which will throw off the rest of your daily plans. You don’t begrudge him the sex you’ve already had today—if it’s made him feel better that’s good, and it’s nice to get some in while you can since tomorrow you are certainly not going to be in any sort of mood for it—but you still hurry back downstairs before your dick can form any sort of opinion on Asriel masturbating.

Your timing is at least not that bad—Hana has plates out on the counter and is putting food onto them, thick slices of toasted bread covered in probably pan-cooked egg and beef hash, with diced potatoes and cabbage and brightly colored chunks of pepper, thoroughly seasoned. Some of this is probably what Asriel brought. At your place at the table there’s your pill in its packet, so you take it out and tuck it under your tongue. Hana looks over their shoulder at you.

“Ree will be down in another couple of minutes,” you say. It’s actually kind of hard to talk with the pill under your tongue; you hope you’re clear enough for them to understand you. “He needs the time to freshen up.”

Hana blushes, so you suppose they take your meaning well enough. They turn back to the kitchen countertop and the stove, fetching a steaming kettle from the old but well-cared-for cooking range to pour tea. It’s all bagged stuff, which you shouldn’t be that disappointed about because looseleaf is expensive so using teabags is more practical, except that the handful of times Chaim has allowed the use of looseleaf has started to give you a taste for it. Sadly, a Friday lunch is probably too ordinary to justify breaking out the good stuff.

You wait in silence for your pill to dissolve and the tea to steep. Asriel arrives as you’re collecting the used tea bags to throw out, visibly much more relaxed than when he first came to the shop today. It’s not like he’s particularly disheveled or his underwear are caught in his fancy breeches, but that subtle air of _just-got-fucked_ still makes Hana turn deeper red than they already are. Your bet is that they’re extra aware of sex specifically because of last night, because they usually either graciously ignore you and Asriel or just give you a glance or two of mild curiosity.

In an unusual show of tact, Asriel just points at lunch instead of asking why they seem so embarrassed: “Your treat again?”

Hana nods, and Asriel smiles at them. “You’re really good at cooking, gosh.”

They clap one hand to their cheek and wave the other as if in modesty, but they’re smiling.

The loaded toast is extremely good. Everyone crunches in silence for a few moments; you sip at your tea after you swallow to make sure that you’re not going to be talking through any of your food. “So how has life been up in the castle, Sir Ralsei?”

Asriel gives you a lofty look as if to assure you that he knows better than to start talking about his parents in front of Hana. _“Boring,_ mostly, the same as it always is.” To Hana he explains, “I am not seen as old or learned enough to really have my say in court or government quite yet, so most of what I do from day to day is study things so that I will be ready when that time comes. Although I do have some time to poke around so that I know what’s going on in the castle and town. That pastry chef says she misses you, Chara, and sometime I’ll see if I can buy some of her things to bring down to you all. Also, Suzy says hello.”

Hana sniffs. You agree. “Under what circumstances exactly did you get her to say hello?”

Asriel wrinkles his muzzle. “It’s more like I was languishing bothering Undyne and Suzy was there and I said hello to her and that I was going to see you guys, and I know you probably haven’t seen each other in a while, and was there any sort of message she wanted me to bring. She told _me_ to go fuck off and stop embarrassing her in front of her boss and the other guards before she said to tell you hi ‘or whatever’. Undyne said she’s so glad that Suzy’s finally made new friends that she was going to unban her, Suzy I mean, from this year’s pie-eating contest. Then Suzy told Undyne to fuck off too, and Undyne said that if she was gonna be like that then she could stay banned.”

_She sure gets into a lot of trouble for someone that shy,_ Hana observes on their slate, handwriting a little messy as they’re eating with their other hand instead of holding the slate steady. You translate this for Asriel, who raises his eyebrows.

“I think she’s usually so busy acting tough and scary and planning to kick miscreant human behind that most people usually don’t even get to see that she’s shy in the first place,” Asriel says.

“Sounds legit to me,” you tell him, and set your food down. “Ree… the small talk is nice to have, but what’s got you so desolate? Did something happen in one of your lessons, or is it family stuff, or…?”

“I’m still going to be with you tomorrow, don’t worry,” he interrupts, and then sighs. “Politics are just— _depressing,_ and I want to help but I don’t know if there’s anything I can do.” He sighs again. “Have you two heard the news about what happened last night on the other side of town?”

You glance over to Hana, who’s looking back at you. Both of you shake your heads.

“There was some Lower City church there that got destroyed in another riot,” he says, “because the priest had proselytized to monsters, saying that—that a difference in species shouldn’t mean they’re barred from… whatever salvation you’re supposed to get by worshiping their… demigod? I think?? I don’t know much about the human religions aside from yours.”

“You said ‘church’ and ‘priest’, so if it was a Christian place of worship, then yes, demigod from their perspective, you got it right,” you soothe, even as you start to wiggle your heel underneath the table. The Lower City proper, yet again—at least it was on the other side of town instead of near Tailor Cohen, but Spiral City isn’t that big, so that’s still too close to really feel safe.

There’s a little _clink_ that makes you startle, looking around the room for the source of the noise.

“Char,” Asriel says gently, “the chalk.”

This makes no sense until you see from the corner of your eye Hana move their hand over their placemat and set down their chalk, which they must have gripped too tightly, as it’s snapped in two. They pick up the longer of the pieces, swallow visibly, and write on their slate, _Was anyone seriously hurt?_

“Apparently we were able to sneak the priest out in the chaos, because my—a healer at court was treating him this morning,” Asriel tells you, once you’ve translated for him. “But we think other humans were probably hurt, maybe even killed. The… priest said that once he’s fully recovered in a few days he’s just going to leave the city and find a quieter place to live, that it’s not worth it to keep trying here if it’s just going to get people injured.”

Which means that the monsters have lost another ally, even though it was one who wasn’t in a particular place of power, and the rioters are getting exactly what they wanted. In an ideal world the priest would have stuck around, maybe used this incident to his own political advantage, but it’s the nature of people to want to protect their own welfare. It’s not very brave of him, but you’ve spent so much of your own life afraid that you can understand the appeal of just packing up and leaving.

It would be nice if you had somewhere you know you could go if you wanted to run. Just gather up the people dear to you and flee in the night, have Asriel sell it to his family by claiming you’ll be keeping him safe, in case something terrible were to happen again here.

But you don’t. It’s just wishful thinking.

You take a deep breath, hold it for five seconds, and then exhale. Your left hand you set on Hana’s shoulder, because they look unusually pale, and your right you lay on the back of Asriel’s hand. Everything is a mess and individuals have so little power it’s sickening—very much a sign that something’s wrong with an aristocracy, if even a prince can’t exert much authority because he’s a monster.

Asriel sighs, his big shoulders slumping. “Sorry this is such a downer. It’s not really a great thing to talk about over lunch, huh.”

You try to smile but it just winds up as your pulling a face. “I did ask. And we were going to find out about it eventually, even if you didn’t tell us.”

“I guess so.”

Hana taps their slate with the chalk a few times before writing, _Are we going to be safe tomorrow?_

“We _should_ be,” you say. “The spot’s kind of unconventional because it’s out of the way, it’s not really in a dangerous part of town. Ree’s magic is powerful enough, and I carry this knife everywhere because I know how to use it if I have to, so in a worst case scenario where something did happen we would be able to run away.”

Their face says they’re still worried, but they just nod and don’t ask anything more.

Neither Asriel nor Hana seems willing to break the quiet, and you’re all vaguely nibbling on the lunch Hana went to the trouble of making for you—eating it too slowly means it will get cold and not taste as good. Someone needs to think of a brighter topic, and that someone is probably going to be you.

“So, Chaim got started on making me new clothes today.”

“Oh, yeah?” Asriel perks up a little, and from the corner of your eye you can see Hana begin to smile. “What’s that been like?”

By the time Chaim returns, your vague attempts at explaining what little of tailoring you’ve learned thus far have meandered into discussing your knitting, and hoping you’ll be able to make decent mufflers or even capes by winter, while Hana laughs at you from where they stand at the sink washing dishes. Maybe the mood is still a little bit forced, but there will be all the time in the world for gloom tomorrow, and you might as well try to smile when there’s nothing that can be done about today’s bad news.

 

 

The weather on Saturday is a lot more temperate than it has been these past weeks, almost cool; the sky is blanketed in heavy cloud cover with a few tiny flashes of blue, and there is only a little wind. Chaim only worked on your shirt last night, and it still has pins in all its seams, so instead of new clothing you wear your nicest dress. Your hair will stick to the back of your neck after too long spent outdoors, but you don’t want to compromise on your looks, not today. You’ve been collecting stones and cleaning them for the next time you’d visit, and now they line your pockets.

Asriel comes to pick you and Hana up, like he’s an actual gentleman instead of some rebellious and bratty prince who prefers riding dick to studying.

“Are you sure you don’t want to light a candle?” Chaim asks as you’re setting out.

You shake your head. “I don’t remember anymore what the actual date was, let alone what it would’ve been on the Hebrew calendar, just the general time of year. It seems disingenuous to just pick a day after the fact, and it’s not like I’ve had the means to actually keep lighting them every year anyway.”

He nods, gaze level. “I hope that I’ll be able to accompany you next year,” he says.

A lot of things—the fact that he cares, the casual acknowledgement that he expects to still be your employer in a year’s time—threaten to bring you to tears, but you just smile instead. “I hope so too,” you say, and you leave with your friends.

You don’t stop to get anything to eat on the way. Hana doesn’t ask, so you don’t have to explain, which is a bit of a relief—though even just thinking about how glad you are that you don’t have to actually say anything stirs memories of that day that feel like they constrict your insides and your throat.

They do look at you and Asriel questioningly when you head for the outskirts of town.

“Yes, this is the right way,” you say, and point to the trees and the hill and the squat little half a boulder you and Asriel found. “She’s there.”

Even seven full years later, standing over your mother’s grave brings back vivid sense memories of being twelve and covered in blood and sweat and grime and tears, hands blistered from handling the stolen shovel, covered in cuts from turning the cleanest sheet in the house into a burial shroud. Some of the stones you laid last year are still here atop the grave. You don’t know any of the right prayers, so you just take the rocks out of your pockets and pile them while Hana stares down at the headstone that Asriel scored her name into with rough and unpracticed magic.

“I know it doesn’t look like much,” Asriel is explaining, very gently, “but we were little kids with no one to go to for help, and we did the best we could. I’m rich and a noble and all, but I was only eleven. I had the money to pay for a coffin but even if we’d known what sort of cemetery was the right kind, we couldn’t have paid for services too. We…” And here his voice goes silent. “We did the best we could,” he repeats again, more feebly.

It hadn’t been Asriel’s first brush with death and you think that was all that got you through it. You’d been so out of your mind with horror that it had made you into an unresponsive husk, utterly numb, silent as Hana; you hadn’t known what to do. Asriel had asked you how to do a human funeral, patiently got it out of you bit by bit, and he had told you to sew the shroud and left for an hour, and he had come back and led you here.

The horrible weight on your back, losing more and more of its warmth. Your vision grays and your face scrunches up reflexive, your hands going cold.

“I’m going to be sick,” you say, and watch from very far away while Asriel takes you gently by the arm to pull you to your feet, lead you into the grove of trees, hold your hair back while you are. He takes a handkerchief out of some pocket for you to clean your face with, and walks you back into the light from a break in the clouds. He produces a canteen from you don’t know where and steadies your hands while you sip from it. He takes freshly crushed mint folded in another cloth out of his coat pocket and holds it out for you to smell. Sharp and cold, it clears your head.

Swishes in the grass: Hana is approaching the two of you, timid, apparently unsure of what to do with their hands, both of which are empty. They must have laid their own stones on your mother’s grave already.

Your throat still burns with bile, though the water has helped. “One day,” you manage to croak, “if I live long enough, it would be nice if I could come here and not have flashbacks.” You smell the mint for a little while longer. “I wish I could be as calm here as you. I know it was horrible for you too.”

“It _was_ horrible, and it’s never felt real,” Asriel says, “but it’s not as bad as ten years ago. I can’t even go near that whole wing of the castle anymore. I wish I could be braver and go there even if it made me sick, like you.”

“I don’t feel brave at all,” you tell him. “Just guilty.”

Hana pulls their slate and chalk out of their bag. _Would it help to leave here and go somewhere else to calm down?_

“We should leave,” you agree, trying to phrase it so you won’t have to repeat their words to Asriel. You understand it but finding the right English to match to the exact Hebrew makes your brain feel like silt sliding through a sieve.

“Let’s go down past the town border and sit by the river to watch the boats,” Asriel suggests.

It’s about fifteen minutes’ walk from the hill and the grove. There aren’t docks here; the riverbanks are uneven, often lined with boulders, difficult for boats to actually land at compared to the docks. Asriel finds one where you’ve sat before, low enough compared to the height of the water that you can take your shoes off and tuck your skirts around your knees and dip both legs into the river, halfway up your shins. Asriel can’t do that with his fancy breeches, and Hana is wearing leggings, but they both sit down next to you.

There are some barges going up and down the broad Ebott River at this hour. You let the current tug at your feet and watch them.

“You know, I used to work at the docks before Chaim hired me,” you say to Hana, “and I’ve gotten used to waiting for late-August Saturdays to do this because Emil told me once I take enough days off for holidays already. I was scared he’d fire me if I asked for anything more.”

“Emil sucks and didn’t deserve you anyway,” Asriel says.

_Chaim wouldn’t do that,_ Hana asserts through their slate. _If you want to do this in the middle of the week next year he’ll close the whole shop for the morning so that we can do it. Since you don’t go to temple anyway he can teach you the remembrance prayers and we can do those at home. We’ll do whatever we can to make it easier for you._

You have to look away at this point to wipe your face. It feels awful to cry when your throat and nose still sting. You want to trade out your digestive tract for one that’s less weak so that you could fucking cry for your mother like a normal person, and maybe even talk about it—talking about it is supposed to help, isn’t it? But there’s no way you could. It’s too awful and—Asriel knows everything already but Hana isn’t like the two of you, hasn’t known you for long enough. It would change the way they and Chaim think of you and—you want to believe that it wouldn’t endanger your standing at the store but you can’t trust that; you want to believe that they’d try to find somewhere to send you if they didn’t want you around anymore but you can’t trust that either.

It’s so hard to breathe. You grip Asriel’s hand as tight as you dare and try to breathe in the mint, try to fight off lightheadedness. Stop. Stop giving yourself a fucking anxiety attack with worst case scenarios—Hana has already proven too kind to pry. Chaim will be too, most likely. You like them both enough that it hurts your heart to keep secrets from them but it’s not like any of your neighbors in the slums gave enough of a shit to pay attention when your mother was murdered anyway. There’s no one who _could_ tell them the details but you and Asriel.

“Tonight is probably going to be really bad,” you say dully. “I’m sorry in advance if I keep you up.”

_It’s okay,_ Hana assures you. _I’ll keep all the lights on for you. What would it help to have around?_

“I’m not going to eat much today, but a garbage bag just in case. Water. Mint. I can probably keep from throwing up unless it’s _really_ awful, but I don’t think we want to risk your stuffed animal getting dirty. I can get cheap yarn to knit just to keep my hands busy.”

“I wish I could come up with an excuse to stay over,” Asriel says, morose. “You’d do better with someone there to watch over you, hold your hand.”

_I can do that, if you want,_ Hana offers.

A pathetic coward like you who couldn’t even save their own mother doesn’t deserve the help of someone so good, shouldn’t keep them up at night like that. But you’ll wake them up screaming or crying or throwing up bile anyway, probably. “Only if you really don’t mind staying up on my account.”

There’s still a worried line in between their eyebrows but they flex with one arm and smile. _It won’t be a bother, I promise. I’ll tell Chaim about it and I’ll nap before and then again in the morning._

You convey this to Asriel, who smiles at you and at Hana. “It’s still frustrating that I can’t be around to help, but I’d feel better with you there, Hana. Chara seems to like you pretty well and all, so I’m sure they’ll handle things better than they would alone.”

“That’s the hope,” you say, pulling a face. “Ree, do you have any stupid stories to entertain us with? I want a distraction.”

“Stupid stories, huh?” he says. “Hmm. Hmmm… d’you want to hear about the book I’ve been reading? It’s pretty silly. It might be something we can laugh about, at least.”

“Go for it,” you tell him, and Hana adds a thumbs up.

 

 

You all stay out until the sky starts to turn. Asriel heads home from the statue, and you return to Tailor Cohen with your pockets full of mint.

Hana cooks you unseasoned white rice for dinner, separate from their and Chaim’s meal, with the promise that this will be mild. As good as their word, they nap immediately afterwards while you knit and Chaim reads Torah; when you finally go upstairs to sleep Hana is awake again and sitting at their desk, quietly turning the pages of some book.

You wake four or five times throughout the night—every time from some distorted nightmare version of your mother’s body or your father roaring or blood on your hands and the stench of death in your nose, heart slamming against your ribs like a prisoner in a cage—and each time Hana is there to pass you mint to clear your mind, or a drink of water to make up for your sweat, or to hold your hand.

Once the sun begins to rise you relax, some, and tell them to go to sleep too: They do, and you both doze on and off straight to the late morning, until you’re both rested enough to get up and join Chaim at work.

 

 

It only takes you about twelve hours to start feeling really steady again, and deep in your heart you give the passage of time a hearty _fuck yeah;_ when you were littler the whole season of your mother’s death tended to incapacitate you. But that period of uselessness has shrunk and grown milder, until it’s only about the 48 hours surrounding your actually visiting her grave that really fucks you up.

What this means for you is that by the afternoon you’re sweeping up the storefront in between clients like you would any other day it was your turn to clean, and you eat a full plate of dinner without worrying that you might get sick later. You feel guilty whenever you catch Hana yawning, but they assure you that they’ll be fine after they get to sleep tonight, so that’s that. Asriel, when he arrives with a box of cinnamon bunnies for everyone to share as well as your pill, spends his whole visit grinning in relief that you’ve bounced back.

You’re in the bathroom taking your time washing your whole body to make up for your lack of a bath or shower yesterday, sitting on the side of the tub and running a soaped-up washcloth over your legs, when the door clicks open behind you.

There’s a split second where your heart near leaps out of your mouth, and you turn to look over your shoulder not knowing what to expect, but—

Then you relax. It’s only Hana, pulling their shirt over their head to hold it dangling off of one arm while they yawn hugely and lean against the door to close it. They’re so obviously not paying attention, moving on tiredness and habit, that you can’t help but smile; while they’re still stretching with their eyes shut you shift your leg so that you can rest your elbow on it and prop your chin in your hand.

Hana yawns again. Your smile grows.

At last they look at the room, and their eyes settle on you. They blink, uncomprehending.

“Hello,” you say.

Their face turns deep red and they lurch backwards, bumping against the closed door behind them. They flail wildly with both arms—you recognize the sign for _sorry_ but not much else—and you feel both very unkind and very fond at once.

“It’s all right,” you assure them, holding one hand up. “I’m probably going to be using the tub for a little while longer but there’s still the shower, you can go ahead and use that if you want. It’s not like I care.”

Hana tilts their head to one side just slightly and makes a very doubtful face.

“I promise you, I really don’t mind,” you tell them. “Hana, we’re close friends of similar gender as well as roommates, and you’ve seen me emotionally naked already on more than one occasion. You stayed up just last night to make sure I wouldn’t wake up confused from horrible trauma nightmares and immediately spiral into a complete panic. Admittedly I think it would be a little embarrassing if you walked in on Ralsei and me by accident, but under these particular circumstances I do not really care if you see me physically naked.”

They scrunch their mouth to the side and shift their shirt to cover their chest and open one of the drawers under the sink to pull out an old hand mirror. They hold it close to their face and breathe on it, then drag their fingertip across so it squeaks. At last they turn the mirror around to show it to you:

_ARE YOU SURE?_

They’re sweet. “Yes. You are the only human being I know who I could actually trust to look at my body without thinking of it as freakish or a curiosity. You’re tired and I don’t want to keep you up waiting for me to vacate the bathroom. Go ahead and use the shower.”

Hana hesitates just a second and then nods. They set the mirror down and start to fiddle with the shower. Your washcloth is running out of lather, so you soap it up again.

You can still feel their eyes on you. When you tilt your head to face them this time they redden and start broadly gesturing sorries again. You shift the washcloth to your right hand and hold up your left so that they’ll know to stop, twist around so that you’re facing them more fully. The color in their face deepens: Their eyes travel down your front and then snap back up to your face.

“You can look,” you tell them, trying to keep your voice as gentle as you can. Under the shyness you’re pretty sure you can recognize the same hope and excitement and nervousness you saw in them over two months ago (how has it been two months already?) at your interview, when they asked if you were like them, when they said they’d never met anyone like them before. You can understand the hunger to see a body that has anything at all in common with theirs—though you don’t actually know how similar you are. “I don’t mind.”

Also, you think they’re actually checking you out a little too, which is cute? The sensation isn’t anything at all like being appraised by potential clients for the sake of a transaction, back before you started to change your body. It’s so much closer to the way Asriel looks at you with care and admiration, but it’s also very _them,_ full of a bashfulness that Asriel’s never had. The way it makes _you_ feel is closer to that, too.

Human strangers finding you attractive is stressful, scary, unwanted, draining. But Hana, who is like you in so many ways, not being able to tear their eyes away from your body—big shoulders and narrow hips, shallow breasts and however much of your dick is visible from where they’re standing—Hana not just looking but actively blushing all the way to their ears like you’re the prettiest person they’ve ever seen—it makes you genuinely happy in a way that you struggle to put words to. It’s—it’s validating but it’s not just that, there’s more to it.

But you want to bask in their attention specifically, so you smile and prop your face in your hand again and let them look.

After a moment or so they swallow roughly and lower their shirt from where they were holding it against their chest. If you’re not overthinking it, their hands shake just a little as they drop it in the wicker basket where you both put your laundry.

“Should I turn around?” you ask them.

Hana folds their lower lip into their mouth and shakes their head. They avoid your gaze for just a moment, dark eyelashes soft against their round cheeks. Then they look at you, gesture at you and themself, and finally hold their hands flat at right angles just below their chin as though resting them on a solid surface and tap their fingertips together twice.

It takes you embarrassingly long to remember what that sign means, but to your credit you think it’s only come up once or twice in their lessons for you. “This way we’re even?” you repeat, just to make sure.

They drop their gaze again and smile, nodding yes.

“Okay,” you say, and let yourself actually look.

You knew Hana’s breasts are a lot bigger than yours, but they’re a lot rounder too—more of that full perfect shape you hope your own will resemble as they keep growing (painfully slowly). They have a smattering of chest hair which is darker and straighter than yours was when you still had it, mostly above where their cleavage starts and around their nipples. Those, like the breasts, are bigger than yours are, with broad areolae. The skin of their stomach is smooth and has just a few stretch marks near their wide hips; their lower belly has more hair, starting short at the sides and getting thicker and darker towards the middle, in a clear line from their navel down to below their pants, which they undo and slowly take off even as you’re watching. Their cock is short and blunt—maybe about half the length of yours or a little longer, it’s difficult to tell exactly from halfway across the room, but extremely thick. They’re circumcised like you are, as you expected they would be if you had similar enough genitals. You cannot see their balls past their generous thighs.

Their whole body looks very soft: Padded gently in fat as if never touched by hunger, which you think at least must be the case since Chaim took them in. They are a little bit like Asriel in that, but if you touched them they would feel different from him—if nothing else, they don’t have fur.

And though you’re very different shapes, they are much more similar to you than you had ever hoped they might be.

Hana finally drops their gaze and reaches out to mess with the shower, and the patter of water droplets breaks the spell. You twist back around so that you can get back to scrubbing, but the afterimage of their body still feels burnt into the undersides of your eyelids.

 

 

Both of you just go to sleep that night without further conversation—poor Hana is already all but asleep on their feet—but you can feel their eyes following you all through the next day, all through breakfast and work, through lunch break as you sit with your head laid on Asriel’s shoulder.

At first you think it’s just their thinking of seeing you naked, but as the day goes on you decide that if that were it they would probably be redder in the face and act guiltier about it. They _do_ blush and look away when you catch them staring too obviously because it’s Hana, but their eyes following you around are more… thoughtful, searching.

So maybe your candor last night has just given them some food for thought and they’re grappling with themself, or maybe now that they’re more awake they have questions to ask and they’re preparing for how they’ll do that. Either way you’re not going to be able to know for sure until they approach you about it, so you resolve to sit back and let them take their time.

It’s not as if you don’t have enough to worry about anyway—it’s hard to keep up with calculating sums in your head if you’re distracted, you need to practice your sewing and knitting, and Chaim has decided to use putting the finishing touches on your new clothes to show you the tricks to sewing comfortable seams and how to make button holes. Even Hana’s soulful stares can only command so much of your attention.

You don’t actually have to wait that long, in the end. When you’re both getting ready for bed, Hana sits at their desk with their slate instead of climbing the ladder to their bunk; you stretch out on your own and wait for them to get started.

_May I ask you some questions?_ they write. _If any of them get too personal you don’t have to answer them, though._

“Go ahead,” you tell them, trying to exude openness and approachability.

Hana chews their lip for several seconds, squinting sidelong at the wall, before they erase their words and write, _What does it feel like to have sex?_

You could get smart here and give them a flippant answer about how they clearly already know what orgasms feel like, but you don’t want to hurt their feelings, and besides, that’s probably not what they actually want to know. “It really depends on who you’re having sex with and what the circumstances are. It can be businesslike, awkward, frightening, comfortable, romantic, fun. You might hurt yourself or your partner if you don’t know how to be careful with each other’s bodies, and it can be nerve-wracking to make yourself that vulnerable to another person, if it’s part of a relationship. Sex is a kind of communication, so you can have… really any kind of experience with it, same as how different conversations can be.”

Hana is looking at you all awed as if you just said something very profound, which is embarrassing, so you shrug at them and smile. “It’s usually at least a little bit awkward and undignified, though, because you’re trying to fit two or more bodies together. Things get slippery. Elbows get in the way.”

They giggle a little, and you smile.

“Is that an answer to what you wanted to know, or not quite?”

Hana tilts their head to the side and breathes out slow. They tap their chalk to the tip of their chin and then start to write again. _What are the things YOU like about it?_

This takes you a few moments’ thinking to decide how best to answer—you do not really want to try to explain your experience with sex work to them, you don’t want to have to worry about how that might change the way they think of you or treat you, but you’re also not quite sure how to explain your exact feelings on sex without using that to compare your experiences with Asriel to. At last you settle on, “Well, obviously I like that it feels good. Ree and I have been through a lot together and we have a reasonable amount of trust in each other, so that makes it relaxing and fun and comforting. I find him very attractive, too, so _that_ certainly helps.

“And that Ree is a monster, so he doesn’t have any of the sorts of preconceptions humans would about how my body is supposed to look according to my gender. I think that with any dyadic cis human I would be worried about being rejected or their attraction being conditional, but Ree has accepted every permutation of my body sexually. He seems to like the novelty of my tits and all, but the… the core of what makes our sex enjoyable to me hasn’t changed from before I started taking E. It’s very reassuring.”

Hana’s expression is so plainly, clearly wistful now. You resettle your weight on the mattress, draw your knees closer to your body and cross your ankles.

“Are you interested in trying sex for yourself?”

They breathe in, small and sharp, and look away, down to the slate in their hands. They grip it more tightly, then loosen their fists, maybe worried that they’re risking breaking the chalk they’re holding too. _I am interested,_ they write slowly, _but_

The pause here as they seem to struggle for the right words is agonizing. Finally they wipe that line out entirely and begin a new one.

_I want to have sex at least once in my life but I’m afraid that I never will._

“Hana,” you say softly.

They’re back to scribbling, so intense that the chalk squeaks on the slate more than once. _My own parents abandoned me because my body makes me a freak and having a freak for a child shamed them. Chaim only adopted me because he’s kind. Who would ever want me? If someone said they did, how could I ever trust that they mean it?_

“Hana,” you say again, a little louder. “Hey.”

_I am so fucking lonely and I have so much aimless desire and it has nowhere to go and I feel like it’s burning me up inside,_ they write, and then they set the slate and chalk down in their lap, plant one hand over them with the fingers splayed. They clutch the front of their shirt and scrunch their face up, flush-faced and grimacing.

The humiliation, the frustration and the fear and the helpless wrath warring on their features leave you wordless for just a moment. You take a deep breath and you reach out, very carefully, to brush your fingertips over their knuckles.

“There are other people in the world like us,” you tell them. “There are other trans people, there are other intersex people, there are other Salmacian people, other nonbinary people. It’s taken the two of us this long to meet, and I—I don’t have any idea of where we should go to find others like us, except for maybe the monsters’ side of town, but there are others like us. And there are the monsters themselves. Maybe cis people are too fucking stupid to see value in the way that you look, but Hana—”

They look up at you a little through their hair, and it thrills all up your spine, and you fumble for words a little as you rest your hand on theirs more firmly.

“I chose for my body to look like this, my body is becoming beautiful, and that makes me so fucking happy, and your body is so, so similar to mine. _I_ think you are beautiful. And even better than that, you’re sweet and you’re cute and you’re funny. It would take a complete idiot not to love you.”

They take a deep breath and blink away sudden dampness in their eyes, and they release their shirt to wipe their face. You smile a little, lopsided, and keep searching their face.

“Sex can feel really intimidating and impossible when you’re feeling lonely and unlovable and wretched, and that’s… that’s actually a big part of why Ree and I started having sex when we were younger. Because we’re best friends, and we were the only people we trusted enough to be that vulnerable with. I’m really glad that we had each other and—and you deserve that too. I’m glad that I’m able to be here in your life right now so you have someone to talk to about this.”

Maybe it’s just because you’ve got a hand on top of theirs and their slate, and that would make it hard for them to write or sign. But they reach out with their free hand and touch your cheek just a little, just briefly, and then retract that hand to grip the side of their pants right after.

You shake your head. You don’t understand what it is about Hana that just _undoes_ you like this; Asriel’s the only other person who can pull the rug out from under you this way.

That actually makes you feel surer about the idea you’ve been turning over in the back of your head since last night.

“I…” You look away and then back at them. “I’ve been thinking this for a while, but… now even more so that we’ve started talking about it. If you want sex but you’re anxious about approaching some cis person about it… how would you feel about trying something with me, if you’d be interested? I have enough experience to make sure that no one would get physically hurt, and also enough to be able to give you control over your own first time.”

Hana flushes redder than you’ve ever seen them, and you’re close enough to see their pupils subtly dilate. Very gently they pull their hand and their slate out from under yours, which leaves that hand on their knee; you return it to your own lap to avoid the gesture getting too intimate.

_But aren’t you dating Ralsei?_

“We aren’t _dating,_ per se,” you tell them, and make a face. “We really are just… best friends who are very close and like to fuck. I _would_ have to talk to him beforehand because we _are_ each other’s only sexual partners right now, but that wasn’t always the case so I can’t imagine why he’d say no.”

Hana furrows their brow at you in clear doubt (why???), but they chew their mouth and then drop their gaze. _As long as Ralsei is all right with it… then I think I would be interested in that._ A little pause here as they duck their head to hide behind their hair. _I think I could trust you._

“Then I’ll talk to him about it,” you say. “We can work things out after that. And—ahead of time—I have a clean bill of health right now but if you want me to get tested beforehand just to make sure I can do that. STDs,” you clarify when Hana peeks up at you in confusion.

They nod just once, like _oh now I get it,_ then smile at you bashfully. _You don’t really have to, I trust you,_ they write.

“You might want to err on the side of caution about that in the future,” you tell them. “A lot of people aren’t as careful as they ought to be, and getting sick is both horrible and costly to treat. This happened years ago but I am speaking from experience.”

_Okay,_ Hana writes. _I will keep that in mind if I have any other partners someday._

 

 

“Why?”

For a good long moment you don’t realize what Asriel has said, so you just stand staring into his face wide-eyed while he knits his brow at you.

Today for your lunch break you’ve led him out on a walk just past the city bounds, so that you’d be able to talk to him about Hana without the awkwardness of trying to avoid Chaim, or the worse awkwardness of having the conversation in front of Hana themself. It’s windy today, almost cool again now that August has become September, and that wind tugs at your hair and Asriel’s ears and his filigreed coattails.

“What… do you mean, _why?”_ you repeat, slow. “We’ve never explicitly decided that we would be exclusive, but we did wind up that way after I stopped streetwalking, so I at least wanted to let you know what was happening before—”

“That is,” Asriel interrupts, clenching his hands at his sides and then unclenching them as if wanting something to do with them, “not what I meant, Chara.”

“Then what… do you mean?” you respond, beginning to frown yourself.

“Why do you want to have sex with Hana all of a sudden?” Asriel asks.

“We were talking and they said they were interested in experimenting sexually but didn’t have anyone to do it with and were worried they never would. It was pretty similar to the conversation _we_ had four years ago when we started having sex—you and I both know better than anyone else how that feels. They’re my friend. I don’t want them to run off and do something risky and get hurt—we were lucky we turned to each other instead of doing anything stupid—so of course I offered.”

“I thought you said you find humans sexually repulsive and you couldn’t imagine ever letting one touch you unless you were getting paid for it,” Asriel says, and he sounds oddly bitter. He sounds _unhappy._ Why does he sound so unhappy?

“That is the case for about ninety-nine point nine percent of humans, still,” you assure him. “Hana is the exception that proves the rule, and they’re only that because we’re so similar. I had no idea that I could have so much in common with a human until I met them.”

Asriel sighs with his shoulders and looks out down the fields spreading out before you. There’s forest and farmland, and the Ebott River snaking out across and between the gentle swells and rolls of land, a mirror for the sky. Further away there are the dark silhouettes of houses, and further than that there are the other local hills and mountains, fading into gentle blues as they grow more distant. “Is that so.”

“Is there… some reason why you _don’t_ want me to sleep with Hana? It’s not like I intend to stop having sex with you. You’re not going to have to find different dick to ride when you’re cutting classes. It’s not like I intend to stop being friends with you either. Is there something wrong? I thought the two of you were getting to be friendly and everything.”

Asriel sighs again and makes a face. “I _guess_ there’s not. And I do know how it feels to be lonely, and not to have any control over your body or your sex life.” He tilts his face up towards the sky and scowls at it. “Dammit, I feel like if I tell you ‘no’ then that’ll just make me the bad guy here.”

He is acting _very_ oddly and you cannot understand what the _fuck._ “Asriel???”

At last he turns to face you again. “I _guess_ you can do it. They _are_ our friend, and I guess you’re right that it’d be sort of silly of me to squawk about you having sex with someone else after everything.”

You reach up and cup his cheek in one hand. “Then why the long face?”

“I’m a Boss Monster, it comes built-in,” he says, and makes you laugh. But he doesn’t laugh with you, instead staring into your face with strange intensity. “Can I kiss you?”

“All right,” you say, blinking, “but what’s the occasion?”

“Just because,” Asriel says, and he holds you gently by the waist and presses his mouth to yours. He licks at your lip, soft and wet and intense, and slides his tongue into your mouth to trace your teeth and shudderingly stroke the underside of your tongue. Heat sparks in your lips and your breasts and your cock, and all the strength goes out of your knees, leaving you grasping at Asriel’s chest and shoulders while he snakes both arms around you and bends you backwards. You can hardly breathe, even though the wind is all around you and the bright midday sky beams down upon you both. If he laid you out flat on your back and sat on your cock right here you wouldn’t complain—you want him to do just that more than a little, and the thought makes you moan into his throat.

But Asriel gently pulls back to nuzzle your cheek instead.

“Holy god, Ree,” you gasp, still limp and dizzy, too much blood between your legs and not enough in the rest of you to stand upright. “I thought I was going to come all over both of us right there. What the fuck is up with you today?”

“You are the dumbest smart person I’ve ever met,” is all Asriel says, and he licks tenderly at the side of your throat while you hang onto his horns and whimper.

“Can we _please_ just. I want to fuck you, is there some convenient shady spot nearby where we can hide from potential travelers and have sex.”

“Can’t,” Asriel says idly. “Your lunch break’s over in twenty minutes, if we head back to town right now you’ll barely make it in time. Plus I have to go home to the castle and convince my tutors that yes I _have_ been paying attention in algebra class instead of humping my chair every day so I can come to the feel of your semen dripping back out of me.”

You groan. _“You are doing this on purpose and I hate you because you are a wicked evil man.”_

He just snickers. “I love it when you make me feel special.”

 

 

(You do make it back in time, but only just. Coming together with Asriel on only your fifth thrust makes having to sprint from the statue to the store worth it.)

 

 

Late that night, long after Chaim has closed the shop and gone to sleep, you meet Hana in the bathroom: “There’s less ambiance than the bedroom, I’m afraid, but the lighting is better and it will make cleaning up easier,” you told them when you suggested it, and they agreed that that sounded more practical.

They shut the door behind them and lock it; you pull your dress over your head and fold it a little haphazardly before placing it in the laundry basket. Even before you turn around you can feel Hana’s eyes on you, tracing from your shoulders down to your ass and thighs and back up again.

When you do turn they glance away as if by reflex, red-faced to their ears. You smile at them.

“You can look,” you reassure them. “You can look all you want—in fact, please do look, so that you can see what you’re doing while we’re having sex. Would you be more comfortable leaving some clothes on, or would you rather take it all off?”

They appear to take a moment to think about it, then take a deep breath as though steeling themself and pull off their shirt to drop it atop yours in the laundry. The rest of their clothes follow it, piece by piece, slowly exposing more and more golden skin, and their perfect breasts, and their thick cock. You idly admire them from a respectful distance until they’re done.

“Before we get started I just want to go over things one last time,” you say. Hana nods. “You can say no to anything I suggest; you can stop me at any time and move on to something different, or stop us for the night altogether. I’ll understand you if you say stop in sign, and obviously I know what nodding or shaking your head means; you’ve got your slate, too, if you need to pause me to ask or suggest something more complicated than my sign vocabulary. Your comfort level determines _everything_ here. Is that clear?”

Hana bobs their head. Their hair sways around their face. They don’t quite meet your gaze, but their eyes are unwavering on you; their expression holds a mix of nervousness and courage.

“Okay,” you say, and turn to step over the side of the tub. “More room in here than in the shower, but still really easy to clean.”

Hana leaves their slate next to the sink and follows you, steps mincing and careful. They’re blushing a little and their eyes are very dark, their breathing seems somewhat fast, but they aren’t hard yet; their nipples look a little stiff but that’s probably just from their body temperature adjusting to being naked.

“Is there anything in particular you’d like to try to start,” you ask, as soft and gentle as you can manage, “or would you like me to take the lead for now?”

No hesitation here—Hana immediately spreads their palms at you in a very clear _after-you_ gesture. You smile.

“Okay.” Now _you_ need a second to think. In the past you served as first partner to a handful of younger clients who either couldn’t afford to hire a brothel worker or were intimidated by the atmosphere of the red light district, but you only offered oral and your only real investment was performing your job well. This situation with Hana could not possibly be more different—they’re your friend who you care for very deeply, and you’re much more comfortable being flexible with them. They’re more vulnerable than the men who paid you, and you feel so tender towards them—in all your life, only Asriel has made you feel anything like this. “May I kiss you?”

They look uncertain, and lift their hands between you to sign, slowly and clearly so that you can understand them clearly: _I’ve never done that before._

“I have actually never kissed another human before either,” you confess, grinning a little with the irony. “But the lips—” you lift a hand idly to rub your lower one “—and tongue are actually a pretty strong erogenous zone, and I think I can figure it out well enough to not be _completely_ awful. Do you want to try?”

Hana looks much more at ease when they nod, and they stand still with their hands at their sides, letting their eyes fall mostly closed.

You take one step in so that there will be less space between you, and raise your left hand to very carefully touch their cheek. Their breath catches just a little—you can see their eyelashes flutter and their lips part just slightly—but they don’t make any move to stop you or push you away, so you trail your fingers down the curve of their cheek until you can ghost the tip of your thumb over their lower lip. Their breath catches again, louder this time. You become aware that your heart is pounding, and then you fold your lips into your mouth so that they’ll be wet and then you tilt your head to the side and lean in.

Your chest runs into Hana’s breasts before your mouth actually touches theirs, and the warmth, the soft give of skin against skin, is startling. Maybe you ought to have thought of that beforehand, but you never even considered this particular difference between kissing Hana and kissing a kind of monster who apparently all have flat chests unless they’ve got babies to nurse. Raunchy paperbacks about cis lesbians have apparently lied to you about a lot: your tits and theirs do not naturally align perfectly. Hana is a couple inches shorter than you anyway, but their breasts are bigger and hang lower, and their nipples press not against yours but tickle the undersides of your own breasts, right at the root. The way you’re standing actually means your left boob gets smushed halfway into their cleavage, meaning their chest hair tickles you too.

But they’re _really_ warm and really _really_ soft and you can feel your nipples tingle as they go stiff, can feel your dick starting to twitch with interest.

You half-close your own eyes and carefully brush your lips over theirs.

Hana’s breath whistles warm over your cheek and against your ear, and your mind scrambles for purchase, trying to adapt to the unfamiliar situation. Asriel’s lips are thickest at the corners of his mouth, but the opposite is true for humans, so you kiss very lightly at the center of Hana’s lower lip instead. They’re starting to tilt their head in the opposite direction as you, leaning into your hand for support, giving you an easier angle; you graze your teeth over their lip and then the tip of your tongue. Their fingertips bump your sides and then their hands rest on your upper arms and you freeze just in case they want to push you away, but they close their grip on you timidly instead. All right, then.

You press your free hand to wall to make sure you aren’t going to overbalance, redistribute your weight, and delve in: First you softly nip at and suck Hana’s lower lip until their heart’s thundering against the middle of your chest and their whole ribcage is vibrating, and then you finally slip your tongue into their mouth to stroke the underside of theirs. They can’t moan to let you know when you’ve hit a sweet spot, so you try as hard as you can to pay attention to their grip on your arms and their breath against your cheek.

At last you pull back, your lips making a tiny wet noise as you separate, thinking to gauge their expression, to check in with them. Looking into their face, though, sends a jolt straight to your cock: Their hair is just barely disheveled and their lips are flushed and swollen, their cheeks are softly red and their half-hooded eyes look solid black with arousal. If they already look like _this_ when you’ve barely even started—god, you want to see their face when they come.

You have maybe five seconds to marvel about how fucking turned on you are right now—you, who sucked hundreds of men’s dicks for pay and stayed completely flaccid every time—and then Hana’s left hand clumsily slides up over your shoulder under your hair to hold the nape of your neck, and _they_ lean in to kiss _you._

They’re rough at it because they’re a beginner, but when they lick your lower lip heavily and start to suck on it the sensation twangs all throughout your body and you whimper short and stuttery into their mouth. Their momentum presses them harder against you and the tip of your cock skims across their skin, a brief brush of warmth that makes you weak in the knees; maybe this has surprised them, because Hana pulls away the next moment, wide-eyed. You hold each other at arm’s length, both breathing roughly.

You take advantage of this pause to look Hana over briefly. Their chest and lower belly are both starting to look flushed, and—you can only just see beneath the soft curve of their stomach—they’re as hard as you, with precome starting to well at the slit in the head. You raise your chin and smile at them.

“Do you want to touch me?”

Still awed and breathless, Hana nods, first small and tentative, then more firmly. Their left hand is still sitting on the fleshy part of your shoulder near the base of your neck, but they lift their right hand from your upper arm and shyly circle it around to hover over your left breast. Even slower and more hesitant, they gently rest their palm on your skin, holding their breath like they’re touching something breakable.

You shiver at the warmth of their hand, your smile growing, and arch instinctively into the touch. Your breast is small enough to fit neatly in their grip, and the palm tickles against your nipple, which hardens and aches and sends flashes of heat through your penis from base to tip and then back again.

Hana slowly traces your skin with the pads of their fingers as if admiring the new curves, all with that same exaggerated gentleness that tickles instead of satiating. You want to squirm, but you brace yourself instead, flexing the muscles in your legs and locking your knees.

“Can I show you what I like?” you ask them, and Hana nods like they’re starstruck.

You rest your hand over theirs and guide them to grip harder, to knead. “Roll your thumb up over the nipple—yeah, like that, just rub over and around it gently.” They do, and your hips sway automatically in midair. The feel of their hands is smoother, more precise than Asriel’s thick pads. It feels more like playing with yourself but much, much better because you aren’t doing it. “Mmm. Just like that.” You let them go for a little longer before you ask, “Can I touch yours?”

Hana’s hand stills on your breast a little, and you get ready to tell them that’s fine and suggest something different, but they nod before you can, shy again. You shift your weight and settle your left hand lightly on their ample hip, reach out with your right to cup their breast.

It’s _heavy_ in your hand, heavier than you expected. When you squeeze it lightly the—the consistency of it, the fat and the glands under their skin, is less even than you thought it would be too. You sweep your hand up over the curve of their chest so that your hand is pressed over their breast like they first started to touch yours, holding them up. They shiver, and watching their face all the while, you shift your hand so that their nipple is very loosely pinched between your forefinger and middle finger. You squeeze them and release. Their hands tighten on your body and they push into your touch, their eyes snapping shut and their mouth dropping open as if by reflex.

And—just like when they laugh, you think they almost make a sound. It’s weaker and higher-pitched, so faint that you can’t be sure you’re not imagining it, but it makes your dick jump and strain in the heated air between your bodies.

“Does that feel good?” you ask. Your voice is staring to rasp. Hana nods. _God._ “D’you—do you want to keep doing this for a while longer, or do you want to come?”

They blink at you for a moment, panting, and then—they move their left hand from your shoulder, reaching across their body to your left hand to tug it gently towards their groin.

“Okay,” you tell them, “okay,” and very gently you fold your hand around their cock.

Hana cries out silently again, shuddering in obvious pleasure.

You hold them for a moment in your palm, the same way you’d weigh an apple or an orange in the market. Especially now that they’re fully erect, they really are quite thick, and short enough to fit comfortably in your hand—maybe three or four inches, definitely about half the length of your own cock. Their pulse thrums powerfully against your fingers and their warm precome drips against your wrist.

There’s something on the underside of their shaft, though, a texture you don’t expect; you shift your hand so that you can explore it gently with your fingers. You would have to get them to sit and kneel down, you think, to actually properly look at it, but where your own penis and all the others you’ve seen in your life have something like a ridge or seam down the underside that continues down the center of the ballsack and then up the taint behind it, Hana’s is split shallowly like—like very rudimentary or vestigial pussylips. The texture inside the lip-like formation, too, feels more like the head of a cock or like Asriel’s pussy than just skin, fleshy and very vulnerable.

“Does it hurt if I touch you here?” you ask, and Hana shakes their head vigorously. “Does it feel good?” you hazard. To this they nod, urgency drawing lines between their eyebrows. You smile and roll your thumb over the head of their cock, smearing precome over their skin as you run your fingertips up and down their shaft. They gasp and shiver under your touch.

“Do you want to touch mine too?” you ask, your voice already half croak. Hana nods again, just as urgent, and their fingers find your cock moments later. You jump a little where you stand, almost overbalancing at the sudden warmth, and you don’t even try to hold back the moan that bubbles up in your lungs as their gentle fingers explore the breadth of your shaft.

You let go of their breast to sweep your hand down to their hip and around to the small of their back to steady yourself. “Now,” you say, breathless, “if you want to try this, we can—can press them together while I jerk us both off. You might’ve heard someone call it jousting because it’s rubbing the dicks together—” and you let yourself trail off because they’re already nodding yes, yes, they do want this. “All right,” you finish, a little awkward, and they release your cock to let you step in closer.

If they’re already warm and slippery in your hand, they’re _searing_ against your cock. They’re so thick and you’re both so wet with precome that it’s hard for you to really hold the two of you together, and the way Hana shivers and grabs your breast and your side and chases your touch with clumsy eager thrusts doesn’t help, but their pulse _throbs_ against yours and jittery pleasure thrills through you in answer.

Hana gasps and arches their back and their cock bucks between your palm and your shaft and then they’re coming, a warm sticky splash against your stomach. You bring your other hand over to stroke yourself while they shudder and fuck your hand, so that you come as their orgasm tapers off: You shiver and whine and ribbons of your come land on Hana’s breasts and their belly.

They sag against you, resting their head against your shoulder while they pant; your legs are so wobbly that you have to press your forearm against the wall to keep both of you from landing on your butt specifically against the hard tub base. Hana seems considerably more winded than you are; they stay put even as you start to get your strength back. You use your free hand to stroke their back and, on impulse, drop a kiss to the crown of their head.

You have to swallow a couple times before you can say it: “Congratulations. You have officially joined the ranks of the sex havers.”

Even though it’s nearly silent, you can still recognize the shaking of their shoulders as laughter.

You take care of most of cleanup—you let them sit down atop the toilet lid and hand them a wet washcloth so that they can wipe their front and their dick clean of come, and you get a second to clean yourself off, then run a little water so that you can wash any stray splatters of semen out of the tub. By the time you’re done with this, they seem to have mostly recovered, and have gotten new underwear on; they’re already pulling on their new nightclothes. You don’t even have to ask them if they enjoyed themself—they are fairly beaming contentedness as they get out a toothbrush and start to clean their teeth.

You get dressed and reach around them to get your own toothbrush, and you elbow each other good-naturedly in front of the mirror for a few minutes in near silence. Hana finishes first and puts their things away, gathering up their slate and chalk and leaving you to have the bathroom to yourself: You spit toothpaste into the sink and rinse your brush and set it in the old cup next to Hana’s, and then you bend down and drink from the tap, and take your time taking one last piss before bed.

They are still waiting up for you when you return to the bedroom, though, which you honestly did not expect. They have the lights turned mostly off except for their desk light and your nightlight, seeming to glow in the soft illumination; they smile at you warmly and sign _thank you._

You’re left momentarily speechless—your first instinct is to say _shucks_ or something like Asriel would. “You’re welcome,” you manage at last, awkward, smiling back.

They step away from the bunk ladder and rest their hand on your shoulder, lean in, and kiss you on the cheek. Fondness wells up in your chest, too sudden and overwhelming for you to speak; Hana just smiles and climbs up to their bunk and crawls under the covers.

You stand there like an idiot for almost a full minute, then say “goodnight” and get into bed too.


End file.
